from Mercer' Q4 Q&A call transcript:
David M. Gandossi -- President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director
Well, first of all on the Shanghai Futures, my view is that if you didn't have the fundamentals right and the supply demand physical side, the futures exchange would be a speculative sort of a thing and more likely a bubble would heat up and cool off, that kind of thing. But I think physical markets are tight, hardwood in particular is really tight when you think about the length of the supply chain from most of the hardwood notes to their actual markets. So I think that's the really tight side right now.
Softwood is balanced. But having said that, there is quite a bit of supply risk with all the maintenance that's going to happen, there is no new supply coming. Most customers are expecting prices to continue at elevated levels and possibly increase. So everybody is chasing pulp, that nobody wants to get behind, everybody wants more than they can get. And so, it's just -- it's driving itself is really my view unless something happens that really significantly impacts demand and I can't see that, it feels like a sustainable sort of a rally here.
I mean, it's -- the markets are balanced to tight, inventories are low and demand is strong. And as I was saying earlier, the printing and writing side is coming back off the floor as countries open and there's any kind of travel, improvements or school forms or just generally people getting back to work will drive some recovery in printing and writing, which is all incremental on top of where we are today, so.