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
t this point in the game I think what we can say about Nippon Steel’s proposed buy of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel is that it will go through, it won’t go through, or the outcome will be something new and completely unexpected. Then again, I’m probably still missing a few options.
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump continues to send shockwaves through the political establishment (again). And steel markets and ferrous scrap markets continue to be, well, anything but shocking. As the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." (I thought the quote might have been Yankees catcher Yogi Berra in 1949. Google taught me something new today.)
Final Thoughts
President-elect Donald Trump will officially retake the White House on Jan. 20. I’ve been getting questions about how his administration’s policies might reshape the steel industry and domestic manufacturing. I covered the tumult and norm busting of Trump's first term: Section 232, Section 301, USMCA - and that's just on the trade policy side of things. It's safe to say that we'll have no shortage of news in 2025 when it comes to trade and tariffs.
Final Thoughts
Another presidential election cycle has come to an end. If you’re anything like me, part of you is just happy you no longer need to unsubscribe or “text STOP to opt-out” from the onslaught of political text messages this cycle produced.
Final Thoughts
With the US presidential election decided, ‘wait and see’ has quickly turned into ‘we’re about to find out.’ Following Donald Trump’s victory, I had a chance to sit down with Kevin Dempsey, president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). He gave his thoughts on what he thought we might see in Trump’s second term in office, and what it means for steel.