By John Richardson THE role of inventory management in European petrochemical price recoveries needs to be re-examined, given persistently weak underlying economic fundamentals. In Europe, as this ICIS Insight article from my colleague Mark Victory points out, benzene contract prices have risen by 40%, propylene contracts have increased by 20% and ethylene contract prices by 21 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Cash Will Remain King in 2010
Still too crowded… Source of picture:www.tripadvisor.com By John Richardson Dear Readers – Welcome Back. Having spent the last two weeks lying on Western Australian beaches, drinking beer and reading books on European history – while also building sand castles etc with my three-year-old son – I have given little thought to chemicals. But […]
Crude, Demand Destruction & Irresponsible Bankers
Source of picture: www.walletpop.com By John Richardson In his own words Paul Hodges of International e-Chem – and also a fellow blogger – puts in a nutshell some of the dangers confronting the chemicals industry as we approach the New Year, with a few interspersed further thoughts from this blog: “If crude […]
To Cut Rates Or Not To Cut…
A Famous Ditherer Source of picture: sarafinewordpress.com Chasing higher oil prices and/or a response to the now long-running recovery in Chinese demand that’s become sustainable? Not wanting to sound too much like the start of a famous Shakespeare soliloquy, these are the questions that should be wracking everyone’s brains as they try to figure […]
All At Stake And At Sea For October
A bit like the fund managers who are anxious to keep the equities rallies going until the end of the year in order to protect bonuses, there must be a lot of petrochemicals people hoping pricing in our sector will stay equally firm. Perhaps, though, these hopes will be more inspired by job preservation rather […]
Calling all CFOs: Ready To Take The Plunge?
Source of picture: oxo.typepad.com Leaving China aside for a change – where the speculative frenzy continues apace -Paul Satchell, chemicals analyst, has a four-step measure for assessing whether the US and Europe are really out of the woods. “Purchasing behaviour is strongly influenced by a customer’s confidence, and, in the current context, four distinct phases […]
Futures, Recycling Behind China PE Mystery?
Picture: The China Daily “I’ve given up trying to read the polyolefin market in China. I just can’t figure out what’s going on,” said a senior source with a major North American producer late last week. “I keep returning to the fundamentals and cannot understand why prices have risen so steeply since mid-February.” Him and […]
Where is the real demand recovery?
Have you ever been away on holiday and have cut yourself off from from work, only to return and find that nothing has changed? So it seems in polyolefin markets. As this blog has been writing about for several months, the recovery in pricing seems to have been mainly feedstock-driven as this article from ICIS […]
Net lending declines by 70-80% in Q2 in China
This very interesting note from Jun Ma, chief economist for Greater China at Deutsche Bank (see the end of this post) offers evidence to support what this blog has been worried about for some time – the quality of China’s economic rebound. The government would presumably be less concerned about the sharp increase in loan […]
Aussie on a losing wicket
The timing of when to strike the ball is everything in the wonderful sport of cricket – and also, apparently, in the American pastime of baseball. An Australian banker is fond of reminding the English how much better his country is at playing cricket. But his gloating doesn’t extend to how well he’s been timing […]
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