From the category archives:

Nerds Only

7 Puzzling Questions About Steel Industry Publishing

January 30, 2009

Don’t get me wrong. I love my steel news sources. I’m a steel nerd and, if it existed, I’d want my FeTV too. But here’s a rant that I indulge in once a year because I think the industry’s subscription news sources are lacking and have not yet fully engaged in the search for a […]

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China, Steel & the Growth of Both

December 17, 2008

The difficulties of interpreting and forecasting the current dynamic economic environment are revealed in the latest World Bank report on commodities. You can download the report at the World Bank site or directly from us here Commodities at the Crossroads, 2009. It’s long-winded holiday reading, but if you follow steel (or commodities generally) it’s worth […]

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GDP and steel demand in Europe

November 23, 2008

In response to a presentation I posted recently on this blog, I received the following questions from an investment firm based in Switzerland. 1) Is your indicated correlation also applicable to Europe only, i.e. could it be used to forecast steel demand in Europe? 2) Europe is expected to grow below 2,5% real GDP for […]

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IMF World GDP Growth Forecast

July 17, 2008

The IMF just released its latest World Economic Outlook. The WEO includes world gdp growth forecasts for 2008 and 2009. Not surprisingly, world growth is expected to decelerate to 4.1% in 2008 and 3.9% in 2009, compared to 5.1% in 2006 and 5.0% in 2007. What does this mean for global steel demand growth? The […]

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Scrap or Pig – Iron is Iron

June 18, 2008

It used to be the case that minimills (scrap buyers) and integrated mills (iron ore buyers) had very different cost structures. Integrated steel producers’ costs were relatively fixed because iron ore and coking coal were sold on an annual contract basis and did not change much year to year. Scrap prices on the other hand, […]

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High steel prices tell us what to do

June 9, 2008

Martin Wolf, as he often does, wrote an interesting column in the Financial Times recently called The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to do. As $1,000/ton steel becomes an accepted fact of life it’s worth asking what the market is telling us to do about high steel prices. Martin Wolf offers […]

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