December Disappoints

We have begun our first steel market survey for the New Year.  Early results are showing December business conditions as having been less than what was expected by both manufacturing companies and the distributors who service those businesses.  After two days of collection, our preliminary results are showing 41 percent of the manufacturing companies as reporting their company as not having met forecast for the month.  Service centers fared slightly better with 31 percent of those responding to the survey reporting failure to meet their December forecast.