Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 19, 2015
A reminder, if you received an email invitation to participate in our flat rolled market analysis please click on the link contained in the message. The questionnaire won’t take more than a few minutes to complete and at the end of the week we will have a Power Point presentation for all of those who participated in this week’s questionnaire.
License data continues to disappoint as trending toward numbers greater than 3.0 million tons for October. The good news from my office today is I at least spoke with a couple of companies who normally buy foreign steel and they are reporting they have little to no foreign steel on order at this time.
We continue to work diligently on our program for the upcoming Leadership Conference which will be held in March (8-9) at PGA National Resort & Spa the week after the hotel hosts the Honda Golf Classic. We are working with trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz to do a segment on the antidumping and countervailing duty trade laws, what changes may come out of the new trade language passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this summer as well as the status of each of the trade cases and what manufacturing companies and service centers need to be doing to protect their businesses in the future. We will have more details about the Trade segment of our program as well as other segments over the coming weeks. Right now you can set aside those dates…
Registration is open for our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in Starkville, Mississippi on January 19-20, 2016 and will include a tour of the SDI Columbus steel mill. We are working with a brand new Marriott hotel (not even open yet) and we hope we can get all of the hotel arrangements confirmed by a live human being soon (we will add them to the website at that point in time).
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
Despite some scary headlines lately (especially about Trump potentially firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell) this is not October 2008 (financial crisis) or March 2020 (onset of the pandemic). But it sure seems like we’ve taken a relatively strong economy and poured a thick sauce of uncertainty over it.

Final Thoughts
I put some of our survey data through ChatGpt, with interesting results.

Final Thoughts
Nearly 50% of respondents to our latest survey thought hot-rolled coil prices have already peaked. And where will those prices be two months from now? Responses were decidedly split on that question.

Final Thoughts
A modest week-to-week change in HR price understates a huge swing in expectations.

Final Thoughts
What happens when ChatGPT meets SMU's Market Chatter? No, this is not an idea for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Then again, with what Hollywood is putting out these days, Chatter Meets Chat might just turn out to be a hit. Rather, it’s that old idea of putting theory into practice. Recently, I conducted an interview with Doug Schrock, managing principal of AI at public accounting and consulting firm Crowe. He gave some tips on how to implement AI into your business.