Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 3, 2014
I will take a moment to recommend the Armada Corporate Intelligence report and the Armada website as something those in the marketing sections of your company may want to subscribe to. The cost is negligible and the value is quite high in my opinion. A good example is on their website on Saturday, October 4th they had an article about the Credit Managers Index. In the article they talk about the drop in the index and its relationship to predicting future PMI (purchasing managers index) direction. The latest CMI dropped significantly and, according to Armada, “This was not a small reversal of fortune by any stretch of the imagination, this could be termed a collapse and it begs a very important question. Who is correct – the Purchasing Managers Index or the Credit Managers Index?” You can read the full Armada Flash Advance Report by clicking here.
On Monday we will begin our early October flat rolled steel market survey. Invitations should go out around 8 AM ET.
I will be out of the office on Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday and Wednesday as we are conducting one of our Steel 101 workshops in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Diana and Brett will be in the office to answer any questions you might have.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final Thoughts
It’s once again A Tale of Two Cities in the steel market. Some are almost euphoric about Trump’s victory. Others, some rather bearish, are more focused on the day-to-day market between now and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Final Thoughts
One of the perhaps unintentional perks of being a trade journalist is the opportunity to travel and cover an array of industry conferences and events. Some I've attended have been at fun locations, like Palm Springs and Tampa, Fla. Others have been in more practical locations, like SMU’s Steel Summit in Atlanta and American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) meetings in Washington, D.C.
Final Thoughts
t this point in the game I think what we can say about Nippon Steel’s proposed buy of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel is that it will go through, it won’t go through, or the outcome will be something new and completely unexpected. Then again, I’m probably still missing a few options.
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump continues to send shockwaves through the political establishment (again). And steel markets and ferrous scrap markets continue to be, well, anything but shocking. As the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." (I thought the quote might have been Yankees catcher Yogi Berra in 1949. Google taught me something new today.)