Final Thoughts
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Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 16, 2016
If there are going to be price increase announcements prior to the New Year they will most likely be made this week as opposed to next when most of the steel community is taking time off for the Holidays. If they are not made this week then the expectation has to be the first week of the New Year, with the expectation that scrap prices will be moving higher once the January negotiations kick into gear.
A reminder about our Holiday publishing schedule. We will publish on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. We will not publish on Sunday (Christmas Day) and will have very abbreviated issues on Tuesday, December 27th as well as Thursday, December 29th. We will not publish on Sunday, January 1st. We will return to our normal publication schedule with Tuesday, January 3rd issue.
We will publish a Premium issue either on Monday afternoon (19th) or Tuesday morning (20th).
We will begin our mid-December flat rolled steel market trends survey at 8 AM on Monday morning. If you receive an invitation, please take a few minutes to click on the link in the invitation which will take you to SurveyMonkey.com which hosts our surveys.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
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John Packard
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Final Thoughts
As February comes to a close this week, the scrap markets are poised for another – and perhaps more extreme – move upward in March. March is usually a month when scrap prices relent as winter’s impediments subside. That’s not the case this year. And this time, the driver of prices will be increased demand from mills along with restricted flows over the last two months.
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Final Thoughts
The US steel market has whipsawed upward on the prospect of expanded Section 232 tariffs of 25% being applied to imported steel - including downstream goods - on March 12. It seems pretty clear that domestic steel mills have the ear of the Trump administration when it comes to Section 232. The result? The much-anticipated Trump bump has finally arrived - and then some.
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Final Thoughts
Some of you have told me that the current market feels about as crazy as early 2021 when demand snapped back after the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Others have said it might be more like late February/early March 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, in the process, caused […]
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Final Thoughts
To say we’ve entered a “Brave New World” since Jan. 20 might be an exaggeration, but we’ve definitely entered a different one.
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Final Thoughts
I think it’s fair to say that the last few weeks – and last week especially – have been among the most intense for any of us covering steel (or aluminum).