Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 20, 2017
This is the last “official” issue of Steel Market Update for the 2017 calendar year.
The Steel Market Update team is looking forward to taking a week off to relax with family and friends and to reflect on what 2017 has meant to them. We hope that you will have a quiet moment to do the same and to appreciate the joys in life and put the trials and tribulations behind you as we look ahead to an exceptional 2018.
On behalf of my team, I want to thank each and every one of you for making this a very good year for SMU. We sold out all of our workshops, we sold out our SMU Steel Summit Conference and our newsletter continues to grow. Thank you.
We don’t have a sales team, so much of our success is due to the words of encouragment and support that we get from you, our members. Thank you, and keep spreading the word.
Much of what we write and many of the speakers selected for our conference come from recommendations by our members. For our business to be one of mutual respect, we need quality customers like you. Thank you.
We continue to build a solid team so that we can produce the highest quality market intelligence, training workshops and conference in North America. Thank you.
We believe that this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference was the largest steel conference in North America. Thank you, and we are looking forward to next year.
Our team continues to grow, and I want to welcome the newest members added this year: Tim Triplett (Executive Editor), Jill Waldman (SMU Steel Summit Assistant), Steve Murphy (Steel 101 instructor) and Laura Remington (market specialist/writer). They join the rest of the SMU team: Diana Packard (CFO), Brett Linton (Data Specialist and my right-hand man), Ray Culley (SMU Steel Summit Coordinator), Sandy Williams (editor and writer), John Eckstein (Steel 101 instructor), Steve Painter (Steel 101 instructor), Mario Briccetti (Steel 101 instructor), Peter Wright (Steel 101 instructor, market specialist, writer) and Alison LaLonde (accounting).
There are others who help write articles including Jack Marshall, Andre Marshall and David Feldstein (HRC Futures), Paul Lowrey (Industry Consultant) and Lewis Leibowitz (Trade Attorney). Thank you all for your help.
From all of us here at Steel Market Update, we wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!
John Packard, President, CEO and Publisher, Steel Market Update
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
“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.)