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    Market Data

    SMU Survey Results: Demand from 2 Points of View

    Written by John Packard


    During the process of completing our questionnaire all of those invited first get to respond to a number of questions aimed at all of our respondents. Then we segregate the respondents into their appropriate groups where they respond to questions specifically designed for each group. The two largest groups are manufacturing companies and steel service centers. Approximately 85 to 90 percent of the respondents are from these two groups.

    One of the key items we track is demand which we look at in a couple of different ways. First, we want to know if demand for all of our respondents products is improving, declining or remaining the same? In our most recent survey 59 percent of our respondents reported demand as remaining the same while 23 percent reported demand as improving and 18 percent said it was declining.

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