What Will 2008 Bring in the Metals Markets? Earlier today, Lisa Reisman and Stuart Burns penned a thoughtful and lengthy post over on Metal Miner offering up their predictions for the metals markets in 2008. Among the metals categories they take their crystal ball to, the two examine where steel, stainless, nickel, aluminum, copper and zinc prices might be headed to on a global basis. In the same article, they also tackle the impact of a falling dollar and rising oil prices on global metals sourcing. What are some the assumptions driving the forecasts they present in their post? According to the metals blogging dynamic duo, “In the face of a slowing US economy, a mixed position for the European economies and a still strong Asian market, it is a particularly tough call this year to judge where prices will go. Our call is the US will teeter on recession. Europe though restricted by high ECB interest rates will still enjoy some (if reduced) growth providing the Euro/US Dollar exchange rate does not strangle exports. Asia in general and China in particular are still enjoying robust growth. China may well drop from the double digit growth of the last 5 years to high single digit figures but that is still a very significant driver for the world economy and particularly the world metal markets.”

Reading Stuart and Lisa reminds me about how much domain knowledge really counts in analyzing and covering specific commodities markets. Call me biased -- yes, I am married to one of the authors -- but relative to the price alerts and regurgitated crap that only mildly passes for journalism that the trades put out on metals, there's no substitute for the type of coverage that only true industry experience can bring to the table. Seriously, do we really want to know that the sky is falling and copper is up today, or do we care about why and where it might go tomorrow -- and what to do about it from a sourcing and trading perspective?

- Jason Busch

Just when you thought that it was time to send the concrete trucks back to the plant to get more sludge for someone else's over-budget foundation, I've decided that it's an opportune moment to solidify this corner of the web universe by designating national RSS ERP week on Spend Matters. Actually, since I enjoy long implementations, I've actually decided to make it last for 2 weeks! So for the very latest SRM dirt on procurement and sourcing, check back early and often for the rest of April as I dig into ERP's impact on the Spend Management world. Next week, I'll be looking at ERP integration and supplier enablement as well as providing some context on what Oracle has been up to in general in the Spend Management world of late. And the following week, I'll be down at SAP Sapphire, writing live from their blogger's corner. Put on the flak jacket and get your SI implementation checks ready as Spend Matters unleashes itself on the world of ERP!

- Jason Busch