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Wall Street History
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09/15/2000
Steel Production
In my 9/9 "Week in Review," I discussed one of my favorite
economic indicators, steel production, which can be found
weekly in Barron''s. The figure represents ''thousand tons''
produced in a week (there is a one-week delay between my date
and the actual production period). [You will also see some dupe
figures which are not necessarily typos on my part. Sometimes
the figures listed in the publication were not updated properly.]
Now I won''t be offended if you think, gee, this is totally useless.
But if you focus on trends, the data can hold some value. For
example, you can see that steel production has been falling
recently, per the economic slowdown that our economy is clearly
in. I will be watching to see if the numbers pick up again as we
go through the fall. If they start to increase in any significant
way, it would be one indicator that tells me the Federal Reserve
may not be finished raising interest rates. A further decline, on
the other hand, could confirm that further rate increases are no
longer necessary.
Also, you need to remember that because the U.S. economy is in
its 10th year of expansion, you aren''t going to see a lot of huge
swings in these numbers. If I went back to the period 1990-92,
you would have seen that steel production was 1936 on 3/30/90
and dropped to 1602 a year later, a significant decline
emblematic of the recession that the economy was entering at the
time.
Finally, if nothing else, I have supplied you with the weekly
closing numbers on the Dow Jones. Wow your friends at
cocktail parties.or use them to get rid of someone you''re bored
with.
--Brian Trumbore
*We will return to more traditional Wall Street History tales next
week.
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