I wrote earlier about positive comments on the US consumer from the airline business.
One industry that's tightly connected to industrial demand is steel. Manufacturing is certainly slowing but there's plenty of stimulus in the pipeline due to infrastructure and green energy bills.
Shares of Steel Dynamics today are up 4% to a record high and that tells you all you need to know about demand. If it's not enough, just now on the conference call, executives said they don't see the doom and gloom that everyone else is seeing. They called order input rates across most sectors 'solid'. The one exception was residential building.
That chart certainly doesn't look like an economy that's crumbling.
Other US steelmakers have also been strong since October so it's not unique to STLD, though the company's higher expose to steel pipe in the oil and gas industry is a specific tailwind.
