Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 15, 2017
News for those attending this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference, we will have free Wi-Fi for everyone attending. This will allow attendees to interact easier with other attendees and with our polling and other features on the SMU App. The SMU App will also have some new features this year and we will write about those in the coming weeks. Early registrations have been surprisingly brisk 193 days prior to the beginning of the conference. You can learn more about our conference, browse the speakers as we add them to the growing list, review what companies attended last year and find information regarding the costs associated with attending this year’s event. The dates are August 28-30, 2017. The conference will begin with a “Pre-Summit” segment which will be conducted at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway Hotel on Monday afternoon so you will want to plan to arrive into ATL in the morning or early afternoon. There will be plenty of people to network with in the lobby of the hotel as the afternoon. Last year we had 200 people in our Pre-Summit segment and we expect this year to reach 300. If you have questions please feel free to contact me at: 800-432-3475 or John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
I mentioned the other day that a manufacturing company CEO with whom I had breakfast on Monday mentioned Jeffrey Gitomer and some of his quotes on business. I looked him up and found a few more quotes that you might find useful, “Your customers are judging every aspect of every transaction and rating everything, from friendliness of people to ease of doing business to quality of product to service after the sale.”
Another quote, “In sales, it’s not what you say; it’s how they perceive what you say.”
Enough said.
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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It’s once again A Tale of Two Cities in the steel market. Some are almost euphoric about Trump’s victory. Others, some rather bearish, are more focused on the day-to-day market between now and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Final Thoughts
One of the perhaps unintentional perks of being a trade journalist is the opportunity to travel and cover an array of industry conferences and events. Some I've attended have been at fun locations, like Palm Springs and Tampa, Fla. Others have been in more practical locations, like SMU’s Steel Summit in Atlanta and American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) meetings in Washington, D.C.
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.)