by Taras Berezowsky on December 28, 2011
Style:
Category: Commodities, Ferrous Metals, Global Trade, Macroeconomics, Metal Prices, Minor Metals, Non-ferrous Metals, Public Policy, Sourcing Strategies, Supply & Demand
Keywords: USA
Here’s the third episode of MetalMiner Sourcing Outlook, brought to you by Zycus. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZeGOlXDXxQ[/youtube] In this year-end episode, MetalMiner provides a look ahead to commodity markets in 2012, namely the steel, aluminum and copper sectors. In the One-On-One segment, Lisa Reisman and Stuart Burns discuss these markets in-depth, and give their takes on economic outlooks [...]
Continued from Part One. So what do the steel price tea leaves tell us about pricing going into the New Year? We can see that scrap prices appear fairly well supported and, according to the CORE report, 2011 scrap prices have been the least volatile since 2001. This suggests to us that raw material input [...]
Watching steel price trends reminds me of a case study question a potential employer once asked me. The case study goes like this “Using deductive reasoning, how many pet groomers are in the US?” Without getting into all of the details of my answer, let us say, I began answering the question logically¦examining the number [...]
Lest anyone take a look at falling LME copper inventory levels and assume demand is on the rise, an article by Reuters’ Andy Home explores in more detail where the metal is going and what may be behind the apparent demand. China’s copper imports accelerated to a 20-month high in November, with 452,000 metric tons [...]
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has come out with its economic outlook for 2012, and it echoes much of what we’ve been reporting on manufacturing: that 2012′s steady-yet-not-barnburning economic growth prospects may well represent a “calm before the storm. (That storm could come in the form of another mini-recession in 2013, according to some [...]
In the first of three reports scheduled for release by the OECD over the course of next year, upstream and downstream companies impacted by the Dodd-Frank banking reform (and subsequent Conflict Minerals aspects of the legislation) have the opportunity to see the results of the OECD pilot study. This first release includes two separate reports [...]
Though we don’t take on too many consulting projects these days, we received a call from a client late last week that got us thinking about what we call the “commodity volatility conundrum. That conundrum goes something like this: “We (the buying organization) would like to have our supplier(s) hold pricing firm for a longer [...]
MetalMiner is pleased to welcome Jason Busch, editor of our sister site Spend Matters. MetalMiner affiliate site Spend Matters sent a representative to attend Emptoris’ annual user conference in Boston earlier this fall. Emptoris is a provider of sourcing, contract management and related technologies to help procurement organizations better negotiate, contract and gain visibility into [...]
