Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 21, 2015
Boxes are piled high around me as we begin to pack up our office for the move south to our new headquarters in Florida. Excuse our mess as we are trying our best.
We had a good response to our latest flat rolled steel market analysis which was conducted via an online questionnaire over the past four days. Sentiment, lead times and negotiation articles were produced through the results of that questionnaire. We will have more articles on Sunday and our Premium level members will have access to our Power Point presentation tomorrow (Friday). I believe we will also produce another Premium supplemental newsletter tomorrow as well. I think this will be the third Premium issue to come out this week. If you would like to learn more about the differences between Premium and our Executive levels please contact me: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or 800-432-3475 and I will do my best to answer your questions (and twist your arm)…
Ray Culley and I are working overtime to finish off the program for our first Leadership Conference which will be held at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida (close to our new corporate offices) on March 7-9, 2016. The conference will be a mix of steel, trade, management and other issues. The goal is to put on a quality program for a select few executives and that they be able to leave with actionable materials. More information will be coming out soon but you need to put the dates aside now.
Same goes for next year’s Steel Summit Conference 2016 which will be held at the Georgia International Convention Center (www.GICC.com) with the host hotel being the Atlanta Airport Gateway Hotel located adjacent to the convention center. We are planning on beating this year’s attendance record and we plan on doing that by putting together an exceptional program and networking experience. Plan on arriving on Monday afternoon, August 29th for networking at the Marriott and then attending the conference on Tuesday, August 30th and Wednesday, August 31st before returning home that evening (or staying a day or two to enjoy Atlanta).
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
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
I’m trying to make sure this is not a TL;DR Final Thoughts. As a journalism school professor once told me, ‘No one but your mom reads more than 1,000 words.’ Also, as the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand as well. With that in mind, below are a couple of charts that I think go a long way toward explaining how prices and lead times have been relatively stable despite concerns about demand.
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, “