Notes from New York City

On Monday and part of Tuesday of this week, SMU President & CEO John Packard attended a number of meetings in New York City. The first meeting was the CRU Steel Briefing where the CRU Group provided insights and forecasts regarding steel, scrap, Section 232 and other topics of interest. SMU hosted the Bank of America Merrill Lynch dinner and held one-on-one meetings with a number of individuals associated with the steel and financial industries.

As you can imagine, the talk of the town centered on Section 232 and its ramifications for pricing. The service centers we spoke with offered mixed signals. A number were convinced that steel prices could go as high as $1,000 per ton ($50.00/cwt) on hot rolled coil, while others were just as convinced prices would taper off come fourth-quarter 2018.