Metal Center News has featured a human hand on its January cover for eight years now as a low-tech digital device to graphically illustrate the theme revealed by its annual Outlook Survey.

The first cover, published in January 2000, showed crossed fingers indicating that “industry hopes were high.” Unfortunately, fervent finger-crossing could not keep the U.S. economy from recession in 2000. After a tough year, “optimism had hit the brakes,” as suggested by the extended palm on the January 2001 cover.

After the industry took a beating in 2001, the splinted but crossed fingers on the January 2002 cover said that “hope persevered.” Indeed, the market began to improve during 2002. By January 2003, service center executives felt that prospects were “a little bit better,” thus the small gap between the thumb and index finger on the cover.

The industry’s “return to profitability” was presaged by the 2004 yo-yo themed design, though no one predicted the market would rebound with such speed or velocity. The following year, the 2005 cover showed that service centers finally had cash in their grasp. Then there was last year’s cover, with scissors taking “a little off the top,” as companies trimmed back expectations for the year ahead. After a surprisingly resilient 2006, service centers are expecting growth to flatten in 2007, thus the pressed palms on this year’s cover.

MCN’s Outlook survey has done a good job over the years of gauging the mood and direction of the industry. When it comes to predicting prices, however, service centers’ collective wisdom falls far short. Asked to forecast steel prices in 2007, for example, respondents were split, with 39% expecting a 9% increase and 38% a comparable decrease.

Today’s volatile, acyclic pricing environment clearly defies prediction. Perhaps the most important finding of this year’s survey is not what the pricing data says, but what it suggests—that service centers may be more vulnerable to potentially disastrous and unanticipated declines in the value of their inventories than ever before.