In my view, prices had probably gone down too far, especially with peak demand winter season looming.

We're just going into the peak season. Anything that is going to disrupt supplies is very unwelcome.

We can expect two months of lost production, and coming in the peak-demand period this is the worst possible news.

Supply isn't going up as much as demand so the prices of metal, especially that of copper and zinc, are going up.

As we get toward the end of the winter season and early spring, we'll probably go through another wave of elevated energy prices, and it will bode ill for discretionary consumer spending. Consumer spending might be rather lackluster for some time, perhaps a year or two. In the end we're going to [see] a consumer that's saving more, is more cautious, and a little more spendthrift.

I've probably gone as far as I can with that particular genre,