SMU Community Chat with Jeremy Flack of Flack Global Metals

We’ll talk about the increased volatility that has characterized the steel market since 2020. Remember when hot-rolled coil used to stay within roughly $500-700 per ton? Those days are gone. Now, we see the difference between the highest and lowest points of a cycle worth more than the price of steel pre-2020.

In 2020-21, Covid and an unexpected snapback in demand led HRC prices to jump from $440 per ton to the highest steel prices ever at nearly $2,000 per ton. Last year, the war in Ukraine drove the sharpest price spike we’ve ever recorded – $500/ton over about six weeks.

More recently, we saw what happens when expectations of recession and a supply glut collide with the reality of resilient economy, few imports, and a major steelmaker unexpectedly stopping production. Prices soared from ~$600 per in November to nearly $1,200 per ton last month.

What are the best ways to navigate a world in which such volatility might be here to stay? And how do you best serve customers when prices are so hard to predict?

Flack will provide insights from both FGM, which participates in the physical market, and from Flack Metal Bank, which specializes in hedging.

Also, check out our Community Chat page if you’d like to see presentations and recording of past webinars.

About Flack

Jeremy Flack founded FGM in 2010 with the mission to reinvent how metal is bought and sold. The company has since evolved into a hybrid organization combining a flat-rolled metals distributor, a financial services firm supported FMB, a sophisticated ferrous trading desk, and an investment platform focused on steel-consuming OEMs called Flack Manufacturing Investments (FMI). In short, Flack has created a business platform to combine physical material distribution with financial futures, all with the goal of creating certainty for its customers as well as FGM.