NEW YORK -- Early peeks into the U.S. aluminum industry's new business and shipment tallies in the current quarter underscore Alcan Aluminium Ltd.'s recent assessment that fourth-quarter business levels and results were falling below general expectations and Alcoa Inc.'s earlier warnings about its third-and fourth-quarter performance.

The Washington-based Aluminum Associations public tally of November bookings and October shipments is out yet, but the picture painted by early December reports of the trade groups clients on Wall Street and elsewhere showed sharp declines in key market areas.

Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Global Research & Economics group said in a report dated Dec. 14 that the industry's bookings of aluminum sheet, extrusions and other mill products "remained weak during November" and shipment volume remained weak in October.

The company's aluminum industry analyst, Dan Roling, who a week earlier had determined "aluminum fundamentals remain healthy and supportive of higher prices once the soft economic landing is confirmed," said the long downtrend in bookings "appears to have bottomed out (but) a clear trend is not discernable."

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. analyst Wayne Atwell said in a report dated Dec. 13 that "aluminum fundamentals are deteriorating in the U.S., with aluminum orders off seven of the last eight months and November down 11 percent vs. the year earlier."

Atwell also said the U.S. aluminum industry's mill product shipments "are down six of the last seven months and declined 4.6 percent in October vs. the year earlier."

Lloyd O'Carroll of Scott & Stringfellow's BB&T Capital Markets said in his December report that shipments of aluminum beverage can stock, a major item for Alcan and Alcoa, were down 2.8 percent in the first 10 months of this year. He also noted that, excluding exports, can sheet shipments were down only 1.6 percent in the period.

Morgan Stanley's Atwell said the U.S. aluminum industry's November bookings of sheet and plate were down 18 percent from November 1999 (with can stock down 10 percent), while extruded shapes were down 10 percent. Foil bookings, he said, were up 14 percent and bookings for steel reinforced aluminum cable were up 2 percent.

Many aluminum industry analysts have trimmed their ingot price forecasts for 2001 substantially in the past few weeks as the bellwether London Metal Exchange price winds down the current year averaging far short of early expectations. A major sustaining factor has been the spate of production cuts in the Pacific Northwest tied by the producers affected and by the analysts to electric power problems in the region.

Macquarie Research, after taking stock of production cuts to date, said flatly, shortly after Alcan announced its plans to cut output by 50,000 annual tonnes at Kitimat, British Columbia, that "all eyes are now on Alcoa--the producer in the region which appears most exposed to further cuts." Alcoa, which shut its 121,000-tonne-a-year smelter at Troutdale, Ore., late in June, began the year with an announcement that it planned to reactivate 209,000 annual tonnes--some of it in Australia--as the year progressed.