Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
September 25, 2015
We will be in Iowa next week for one of our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshops. We are looking forward to working with SSAB again, as we did a workshop in Mobile, Alabama and toured their Alabama facility. This is our first trip to Iowa.
We are working on ironing out the details on our next Steel 101 workshop which is expected to be in the south in January 2016. We will provide details once they are available.
We also intend to provide more details from last week’s flat rolled steel market analysis in Tuesday evening’s edition of our newsletter.
For our Premium members we will provide our Key Market Indicators in tomorrow’s Premium supplemental issue.
This week will be a busy week for the industry as both US Steel and ArcelorMittal are back at the negotiation tables with the United Steelworkers, as we reported in one of tonight’s articles we will learn if Fiat Chrysler workers vote not to accept the contract and we will have the beginning of negotiations on ferrous scrap prices which are expected to plummet $20 to $50 per gross ton.
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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We had an October surprise here at SMU on Wednesday. I was working from the CRU office in Pittsburgh, and the internet connection briefly went out. As luck would have it, that happened smack in the middle of a live Community Chat webinar. Fortunately, my colleague David Schollaert stepped in, Zekelman Industries CEO Barry Zekelman rolled with the punches – and the show went on. Could there be any more October surprises in store for us and for the steel market?
Final Thoughts
We just wrapped up another Steel 101 workshop, easily the most hands-on industry workshop on steelmaking and market fundamentals, in this humble opinion. Last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, SMU’s Steel 101 was held in Starkville, Miss.
Final Thoughts
Everybody has an opinion about politics these days. More importantly for our readers, though, every business has a bottom line. A popular question in our most recent steel buyers survey asked how uncertainty around the upcoming US presidential election could affect that line.
Final Thoughts
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Final Thoughts
It’s another week of big headlines for the world writ large – an expanding war in the Middle East, another potentially catastrophic hurricane – and not much going on in the world of steel prices. “Call me Stevie Wonder, I see nothing.” That’s how one service center executive described the current sheet market. There seems to be almost a competition among some of our Community Chat guests and contributors to outdo each other in flowery ways to say, “