Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
July 2, 2018
Welcome back to those of you in the United States who had the Fourth of July off, but didn’t decide to take a few extra days and extend the holiday. SMU was closed on Tuesday and Wednesday in honor of the Fourth and also to give myself a bit of a break having just been in New York City and London over the past week.
For those of you registered to attend our 8th SMU Steel Summit Conference on Aug. 27-29 in Atlanta, the room blocks have been sold out on the three Gateway hotels next to the convention center. We still have rooms available at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Hotel from which we will be running a shuttle to the Georgia International Convention Center. At our last count, there were 70 rooms left in that room block.
The Atlanta Airport Marriott Hotel is 1.5 miles south of the Georgia International Convention Center, but includes a complimentary shuttle. Click here to book your stay here at $151/night or you may book over the phone at 1-888-239-1203; ask for the Steel Market Update room block.
Here are some of the recent registrations as we bump up against 700 registered attendees for the 2018 conference with 52 days to go: Lapham-Hickey Steel, Honda Trading de Mexico, Norfolk Iron & Metal Co., Luminus Management, CAN-PACK S.A., Mississippi Steel Processing, MISA, Westman Steel Industries, Metal Center News, National Oilwell Varco, Quality Edge, Inc., Worthington Industries and Majestic Steel. If you have any questions about pricing, how to register, hotels or just general questions, I am happy to answer them for you. You can reach me at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 800-432-3475.
My meeting in London with CRU management and members of their various teams made me feel very comfortable with the decision I made to sell the company to them. I know it will take some time, but we are already hard at work developing or expanding on projects that I began but needed help to bring to fruition. SMU will continue to be on the cutting edge as we grow our business.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
John Packard
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We had an October surprise here at SMU on Wednesday. I was working from the CRU office in Pittsburgh, and the internet connection briefly went out. As luck would have it, that happened smack in the middle of a live Community Chat webinar. Fortunately, my colleague David Schollaert stepped in, Zekelman Industries CEO Barry Zekelman rolled with the punches – and the show went on. Could there be any more October surprises in store for us and for the steel market?
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Everybody has an opinion about politics these days. More importantly for our readers, though, every business has a bottom line. A popular question in our most recent steel buyers survey asked how uncertainty around the upcoming US presidential election could affect that line.
Final Thoughts
I’m trying to make sure this is not a TL;DR Final Thoughts. As a journalism school professor once told me, ‘No one but your mom reads more than 1,000 words.’ Also, as the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand as well. With that in mind, below are a couple of charts that I think go a long way toward explaining how prices and lead times have been relatively stable despite concerns about demand.
Final Thoughts
It’s another week of big headlines for the world writ large – an expanding war in the Middle East, another potentially catastrophic hurricane – and not much going on in the world of steel prices. “Call me Stevie Wonder, I see nothing.” That’s how one service center executive described the current sheet market. There seems to be almost a competition among some of our Community Chat guests and contributors to outdo each other in flowery ways to say, “