Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
August 27, 2018
Due to our conference, we will hold back on producing our steel indices until Thursday of this week.
It’s Tuesday evening and we are deep into our 8th SMU Steel Summit Conference. The official number of attendees is 912, which exceeded our most optimistic expectations when we did our last forecast about six months back.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) we have a very strong program with Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics, a one-on-one discussion between Nucor CEO John Ferriola and me, an interesting manufacturing panel, followed by Ron Insana of CNBC and then another one-on-one with Robert Perlman, Executive Chairman of CRU, along with a panel consisting of Chris Houlden and Josh Spoores of CRU and myself.
Then I get to collapse and sleep for four days (thank you for the Labor Day weekend).
We will not publish on Sunday due to the holiday.
I want to thank my SMU team for all of the hard work they have put into our conference as well as our newsletters: Ray Culley, Jill Waldman, Brett Linton, Diana Packard, Alison Lalonde, Tim Triplett, Peter Wright and Sandy Williams. I also want to thank Steve Painter, Chuck McDaniels and Jeff Lalonde for their help during the conference.
We will have much more about the conference in Thursday evening’s issue of Steel Market Update.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
I wrote in a Final Thoughts a few years ago that it seemed all the swans were black. More recently, I’ve been asked by some of you what the wildcards are for 2025. You could probably make the case that all the cards are wild now.
Final Thoughts
SMU lets readers respond on their thoughts about President Joe Biden blocking Nippon's deal for U.S. Steel.
Final Thoughts
Some world-changing events happen in an instant. Others take many twists and turns. The outcome remains unknowable at every phase. That is, until you finally arrive at the end of the roller coaster, the safety bar lifts up, and you stagger off the ride. It appears such is the case with Japan’s Nippon’s Steel Corp.’s (NSC’s) proposed $14.9-billion buy of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. And the ride ain't over yet.
Final Thoughts
I’m not sure what to say about President Biden’s blocking Nippon Steel’s deal for U.S. Steel that hasn’t already been said. I think it’s fair to say, as U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt did, that this was ultimately all about politics and had very little to do with national security. SMU has tried to remain […]
Final Thoughts
We never eat chicken on New Year’s Day. My Irish-Catholic grandmother thought it was bad luck – because chickens scratch backward. And one should start the year looking forward. But it’s hard to avoid the fact that we’re carrying a lot 2024 issues (and even 2023 ones) forward into 2025. That’s not all bad. We’re starting 2025 with SMU’s hot-rolled coil price at $675/per short ton (st). That’s $370/st lower than $1045/st at the outset of 2023, according to our interactive pricing tool. I think we can safely say that a decline of that magnitude won’t happen in 2025.