Metal Monday November 1, 2021 with Nick Snyder and Brett Ekart.
Play the youtube video and follow along with the text below.
Nick Snyder:
All right. Welcome. It is officially November. How you doing Brett?
Brett Ekart:
I'm doing good, man. Yourself?
Nick Snyder:
Doing awesome, man. We had a great Halloween at our home, but I'm ready to get this week kicked off.
Brett Ekart:
My oldest boy turned 12 on Saturday. And then Halloween yesterday. So it was an eventful weekend at the Ekart's house.
Nick Snyder:
Awesome, man.
Brett Ekart:
Kids everywhere.
Nick Snyder:
I love it. They don't remember some of that stuff forever.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. It's good, man. It's just crazy to think how time flies. I remember, Braxton, when we did the grand opening at this facility, him being just a baby and we did the whole scissor cutting deal.
Nick Snyder:
We still have that poster put together. And I see him like every time I walk into the copy room. He's right there.
Nick Snyder:
Now he's taller than me.
Brett Ekart:
That's kind of my benchmark for this Boise facility, really.
Nick Snyder:
I think he's taller than me now. But I'm short, so it's not that crazy. But that kid is growing like weed.
Brett Ekart:
He is, man. He is.
Nick Snyder:
All right. Well, you had a cool podcast last week.
Brett Ekart:
I did, man. I did with Chad Ellerbrock. He brought the idea to me, so I can't even take credit. Every month these negotiations happen, between the scrap suppliers and the scrap consumers, whether it's a shredder facility, or a steel mill, or an export facility. We just kind of got together and presented, from our standpoint, the bull case and the bear case. The bull being why the market should be up significantly this month. The bear case, what's pouring some cold water on what we anticipate to be a pretty good up movement this month.
Nick Snyder:
That's a cool idea. Excited to see that come through every month. But you still are real confident in this month, ferrous wise?
Brett Ekart:
I feel it's going to be strong. I feel like the steel mills are going to have to pay a decent price, especially over here on this end, because the export market's kind of heating up a little bit. But also, probably my biggest bull case really for anything is the most scrap recyclers have had a pretty good year this year. So, it's not going to kill them to sit on some inventory. If it was a pretty up and down year, then yeah, they need cash flow. They're going to have to sell, or they need space, or whatever the case may be. A, the scrap flow isn't crazy, it's not overwhelming most facilities at this point. And B, they've had decent years. So for them to sit on some material and just see how this next two months shake out, I feel like it's going to take a pretty good number to draw that material off the sideline, to get people to book that profit and book that material going into the end of the year and basically recognize that gain.
Nick Snyder:
Well, cool. Hopefully we see my good up numbers. I've been telling our customers that's what we anticipate, but we never know until it happens, 'cause we've seen that. We've kind of got screwed ourselves before where we're like, "Oh, we know it's going to be up. I'll pay you this." And then it's like, "Nope." Sideways. And we're like, "Well, you just got to live with it."
Nick Snyder:
But, we saw copper cool off. We saw aluminum cool off.
Brett Ekart:
Nonferrous wise, they took some gas out of it last week or two really.
Nick Snyder:
But overall it's really strong still. Why would you have an opinion on why copper cooled so quickly?
Brett Ekart:
People trade momentum. And that was kind of the hot deal there for a while. People were really diving into the low inventories in the COMEX warehouse. And well, depending on the demand situation, everything getting electrified and this and that. Really, I think it was a matter of that was the hot trade. It got pushed real hard, real quick.
Brett Ekart:
And then [inaudible 00:04:41] China and some other people came out and took the gas out of it. Well, I think the general consensus is that's a great long term trade. I think we're going to have some bumps in the road. It's going to be some ups and some downs. But, generally speaking, copper as a metal in the next 5 to 20 years is going to be absolutely humongous. Just because if you want to electrify everything, you need two metals. You, you got to have copper and, a certain amount, you got to have silver. Which we don't talk a lot about on this show, 'cause it's not an area that we deal with much. But copper, for sure, is going to be humongous.
Brett Ekart:
And that's one of the reasons why we've invested so heavily in copper as a metal, whether it's processing it through our wire choppers or going out and getting it. We feel like that's kind of one of the metals of the future.
Nick Snyder:
Absolutely. Well, next week we'll have some answers on ferrous and we'll let everyone know what all the base metals do.
Brett Ekart:
Yes, sir.
Nick Snyder:
Thank you.
Brett Ekart:
Have a great week, everybody.