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Strategies & Market Trends : Bosco & Crossy's stock picks,talk area -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sscholle who wrote (8620)	3/30/2005 7:58:53 AM
From: Crossy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37387

sscholle, I have no explanation for that... unlike oil I have no current way to check into the price of steel or iron ore (futures markets).. pls. not that RESC or IIIN have risen much, so some technical reaction from their respective tops was expected. OTOH some buying opportunity might have been created. There are surely contradicting reports of Chinese steel trading trends. Some say the PRC is importing and more, others say it became an exporter again. No hard data to cling to. In such a situation, we have to check into the operational updates from the companies.. one explanation would be the increase in upstream input factor prices like Iron ore or coking coal.. OTOH.. minimill models like RESC do not need these inputs for their production process. But usually substitutes pricing tends to be somewhat correlated, so we might see increasing scrap metal pricing, at least in the US. Energy prices are certainly going up also.. rgrds CROSSY

To: sscholle who wrote (8620)	3/30/2005 8:41:22 AM
From: Patentlawmeister	Respond to of 37387

I think the main catalyst for steeel stocks' demise this week was a paragraph in Alan Albenson's Barrons column where a short-focused hedge fund said US Steel was a good short candidate, in that he predicts $9 eps this year, $6 next year and $4 the year after. This guy has quite the crystal ball, don't you think?

To: sscholle who wrote (8620)	3/30/2005 12:35:00 PM
From: Mike M2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37387

Scholle, the steel sector came under pressure from a number of issues 1. increase in chinese production of low end steel see reuters.co.za 2. Major european steel producer #2? Arcelor cutting production to reduce inventories. 3. fears that the Fed rate hikes might impact the bubble economy 4. rising costs of iron ore & metalurgical coal - although labor , health care & retiree benfits costs are the big cost for US steel producers . It is my understanding that US Steel ( X) has its own iron ore mines while AKS must purchase its ore. 5. Barron's Doug Kass piece ( I haven't read it) . the iron ore producers are a nice way to play steel BHP, RTP, RIO less competitive pressures. CLF - Great Lakes region iron ore producer is quite volatile. Final point - fears that China's economy may slow it's rate of growth- it would still be the world's fastest growing major economy .