Friedrich Sturm Market Report - 23.01.03
The US $ in EURO
1,2650
What happened this week: Kung Hei Fat Choi! Let us see if the year of the monkey is going to deliver the same expansion and success of the Asian leather industry as in 2003. At least this week the industry in the Orient took a break and relaxed to be prepared for the challenges to come. Activity from Asia was consequently slow, although still some e-mail traffic was noted - without leading to any kind of business. The shortlived rebound of the USD evaporated also the benefits of export calculations and so we are back where we were about two weeks ago. The situation in the USA is also normalizing by the day and so is rationality taking over again and one can return to the normal evaluations of supply and demand. Our assumption, that the firmer USD could support the European market faded with every Cent the USD lost. The market was consequently just about steady and only some of the regular European sales were concluded. However, with the large sales booked over the last weeks it doesn’t change very much and might be even better to prevent the
