March/April 1999
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York Bureau Chief for Scrap.
Sept. 17, 1958, is a memorable date for me.
That day marked the publication of the first issue of the NARI Metals Report, which, under various incarnations—such as changes of name and color of paper—may have been one of the oldest continuously published newsletters anywhere. In 1998, the newsletter—then published as ISRI’s Commodities report—celebrated its 40th anniversary.
The first issue was sparse. It told about a U.N.-sponsored conference on copper, lead, and zinc in London, reported that domestic stocks of refined copper had decreased 27,000 tons in August while deliveries of refined copper had risen more than 9,000 tons, noted that Washington was keeping mum about any plans for higher tariffs on lead and zinc, and observed that aluminum use in automobiles was up 14 percent.
“These days,” the newsletter said, “the operation of a scrap metal dealer even in the smallest city is affected by what happens in London, Lebanon, or Rhodesia.”
What happens in London is still vital to the metal markets as merchants scan the daily LME figures. But Lebanon and Rhodesia? Today it’s Asia, where the Korean economic decline, the muddled Japanese situation, and hopes of expanding trade with China are affecting the world markets.
From 1958 to 1984, I was the newsletter’s sole author. It’s difficult to imagine that one person could have kept abreast of the flow of so much market data. Of course, that was in the pre-Internet age, before faxes became popular, even before the worldwide spread of news by TV.
Looking back, I note that most of the newsletters dealt with copper, perhaps because most of our members handled copper and brass scrap. But aluminum was coming on fast. We were pleased to receive word from the New York office of Reynolds Metals Co. that “your comments often make the daily news summary our department prepares for executives in Richmond.” Or to hear from the Architectural Aluminum Manufacturers Association about “the excellence of your reports and especially for your almost clairvoyant observations on aluminum in the October 3 issue.” (Please note the “almost.”)
It was also flattering to receive a note from Edwin C. Barringer, retired executive director of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel, in which he asked, “How in the world do you keep up with all the nonferrous markets?” And even more surprising were letters from leaders of other metal news publications, such as Archer W.P. Trench, president and publisher of American Metal Market, who wrote that our newsletter “is one of the few periodicals I read regularly, and it is surprising how often I route it, file it, or take other action on it.”
Perhaps the best compliment we ever received was one early on from Ralph Wilcox, manager of the silver department of Asarco Inc., who wrote that our report was “interesting, and much to my surprise, correct.”
Who could ask for more?
While most of the newsletters dealt with copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, and nickel, the NARI Metals Report didn’t neglect the minor metals such as cadmium and bismuth. There’s a funny story, in fact, related to bismuth. During some stormy congressional hearings about the stockpiling of metals and possible barter proceedings, it was learned that the Department of the Interior was considering an arrangement with domestic opium refiners to supply a large quantity of bismuth metal in exchange for upgrading off-grade opium stocks. Said Simon Strauss, then with Asarco, who was at the hearings, “In other words, people in the opium business will now also be in the bismuth market.”
As a consequence, I sent Strauss the following lyric:
Opium dealers from here to the isthmus
Will soon be peddling tons of bismuth;
Soon bismuth will rank with those rare few
Products controlled by Fu Man Chu.
And paperback heroes now will cope
With stolen bismuth instead of dope.
Shades of Holmes and old Nick Carter
Is this the end-result of barter?
Strauss replied: “Thank you for sending me your splendid poem on bismuth and opium. If I have a chance at any later hearings of the Stockpile Committee, I am going to take the liberty of quoting it.”
Humor was, of course, one of the ingredients that made the newsletter popular. One can tell by some of the titles that these were no dry statistical essays: “Copper Psychoanalyzed,” “Agent 008 and the Copper Caper,” “The Scrap Market: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Into Orbit With Space Metals,” “Alice in a Copper Market Wonderland,” and so on.
We decided from the start that the newsletter would be one page, with news on the front and back. We realized that people were already being inundated with information. A one-pager was about all a businessman would want to read. Many told us that they’d take our humble page, put it in their pocket, take it home, and read it after dinner. That was a compliment, of course.
It was my old friend Fritz Rosenthal, then with Associated Metals & Minerals Corp. (New York City), who used to plague me with the question, “How do you always manage to write just two pages of the newsletter?”
Here was my answer (with a straight face): “Fritz, ever hear of the ‘bed of Procrustes’ in the old Greek myth? The giant Procrustes would stop anyone who was trying to pass his cave, place him on his bed, and if his feet didn’t reach the bed’s end, stretch them until they did. If, however, they were too long for the bed, he simply chopped them off to fit. That’s exactly what I do with my copy!”
I can still see the incredulous look on his face. In its earliest days, the newsletter was mimeographed. After that—and for nearly 30 years—it was printed on green paper, earning it the nickname the “green sheet.” After NARI and ISIS merged to form
ISRI, the newsletter switched to white paper and changed its name to Commodities.
In 1984, we were fortunate to have Bob Garino join NARI. A veteran of the New York office of CRU, the well-known commodities research institution, he was familiar with the twists and turns of the metal markets. He began to contribute his market reports and later took over responsibility for the newsletter. When NARI merged with ISIS, Bob moved to Washington to become ISRI’s director of commodities. Today, 15 years later, he’s known far and wide as a skilled metal market analyst, with his views embodied in Commodities, Scrap, and the e-mailed Friday Report.
One rainy day about a decade ago I took out my calculator and figured that I’d written some 2 million words about nonferrous and ferrous metals and scrap in the pre-Garino period. That’s a lot of words! I wonder whether some of those words hung around long enough to make an impression and be remembered, or whether they just vanished like smoke into thin air.
For Commodities, which just ended its 40th year, there’s the tradition of the NARI Metals Report, a history filled with not only the ups and downs of the markets, but the voices of wonderful people, many of whom (alas) are now gone but whose help and assistance was of special importance in keeping us out of blind alleys and in guiding us to the true paths of market reporting. •
Editor’s note: As of Jan. 1, the Commodities report is no longer being published in printed form. It has been replaced by the Friday Report, an e-mail market report available by request exclusively to ReMA members.