Analysis
February 11, 2024
Final thoughts
Written by Ethan Bernard
What’s something going on in the market that no one is talking about? That’s a question on our survey, and it was also posed to many who graced the stage at our Tampa Steel Conference 2024. Actually, another way to phrase that is “not talking about publicly.” Trying to connect the dots of steel market chatter to find a central issue, I thought one survey respondent really summed up the current moment: “Right now, it is all politics.”
That’s what one would expect in a presidential election year. Still, it hits a bit different in 2024. In February 2020, the words “lockdown,” “social distancing,” and “super-spreader” had not yet become engrained into our everyday vocabulary. Investors who were long Plexiglass had not yet cashed in on amazing fortunes. And, for the white-collar worker, “remote” probably referred to the thing to change the channel rather than a Zoom/Teams meeting that never ends.
