Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 19, 2016
One of my habits when writing this newsletter is to hold my Final Thoughts until after the vast majority if not the entire newsletter is complete. At that point I try to absorb what has transpired through the day and many times that day flows well into the evening. I think this is one of the differences between what Steel Market Update does and what happens at other periodicals.
This evening Jack Marshall of Crunchrisk, LLC and the author of this evening’s hot rolled futures article, spoke with me about the change in the HRC futures market over the past week. We went from there being too many sellers and not enough buyers to too many buyers and no sellers. Something has changed. Something to watch.
This evening I traded texts with a large service center that is active in the futures market and their comment was “demand is bad” which is not an endorsement for higher prices anytime soon…
I became aware this evening that Essar and Cargill have teamed up regarding a “structured load” or potential bid on US Steel Canada. I will work more on this story in the morning to see if we can understand exactly what is happening and any impact that it might have on the USSC operations.
I don’t know about you but I am glad the presidential debates are over and we have less than 3 weeks to the election. When we held our 6th Steel Summit at the end of August we did a straw poll of attendees using our App to see how many were Trump vs. Clinton supporters. At that time 48 percent of those voting (148 responses) were Donald Trump supporters, 22 percent were Clinton supporters and the balance were either other or didn’t care. I am curious how the results may have changed over the past couple of months…?
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
United Airlines raised eyebrows earlier this month when it provided two forecasts for 2025 – one assuming a relatively stable economy and another assuming a recession. The reason? Uncertainty around the impact of President Trump’s policy shocks on the broader economy. And it sometimes feels like we’re seeing a battle between those two narratives (stable vs recession) play out within in the pages of this newsletter.
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.