Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 4, 2017
Hectic day here at SMU as our server was down (actually the entire server farm) for a couple of hours right at our peak publishing time. You may have noticed our website either moving very slow or not being able to access the site at all between 4 PM ET and 6 PM. Everything is fine now and we are actually seeing our load times being faster than they were earlier today.
Behind the scenes Steel Market Update continues to make investments to benefit our members. We are updating the software that is the platform for our website. That has mostly been done and the biggest change you might notice is the faster and smoother uploads. We are also have a new mobile platform developed to improve and upgrade your ability to read our newsletter and access our website on your smart phone. We expect this to be completed within the next month and we will advise once it is ready to roll.
We are also investing in people and we hope to have some announcements in that regarding in the coming weeks.
Don’t forget that the Chicago Metals Industry is hosting their Boy Scout Dinner in Chicago on Thursday, May 18th. I am in the process of looking at my schedule to see if I can be there this year.
Short one tonight due to the issues we had with the server farm…
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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“We’ll always have Paris,” as the famous line in Casablanca goes. And this month, the global steel industry did as well. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Steel Committee met in the City of Lights earlier this month. There was also a meeting of the Global Forum addressing excess steel capacity.
Final Thoughts
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.)