Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 1, 2016
Correction: CME HRC settlement number for January was $389 per ton, not $398 per ton as we mistakenly identified in our monthly analysis table published in our Sunday evening edition. Unlike Platts and our own SMU hot rolled index, the index used by CME had hot rolled prices dropping by $7 per ton during one of their weekly posts. All of the indexes followed by SMU (Platts, SteelBenchmarker and SMU) had HRC prices rising during the entire month of January. If you have any questions you can contact the CME Group or your bank or broker (such as Andre Marshall or Spencer Johnson) for more details.
We are in the middle of a flat rolled steel market trends analysis. We will begin reporting the results of our analysis which comes from the questionnaire we invite up to 600 people representing over 550 companies to complete. Our Premium members will have access to a Power Point presentation with a great deal of the results on Friday of this week (we post it on our website along with past presentations). Those of you trialing our newsletter will also have access to the presentation which can be found under the Analysis tab (after you are logged into the website).
We will also be publishing a Premium supplemental issue of our newsletter with our Key Market Indicators and a couple of other articles tomorrow.
If you are an Executive member or on a free trial and you would like to learn more about the differences between our Premium level product and Executive please feel free to contact us at: info@SteelMarketupdate.com or by phone: 800-432-3475.
We found out today that when we transferred our 800 number to our new office our new phone company did not include Canadian customers with access. We are getting that corrected. Until we are certain that the 800 number functions as it should you can use the following local number: 772-245-8630.
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, “