By John Richardson WHEN the tide eventually goes out, we will find out who has been swimming naked. This will also be the case in several emerging markets, ex-China, when the Fed eventually draws down its stimulus. Hot money seeking higher returns has flowed into India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, for example, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The Complexities Of Benzene
By John Richardson SOMETIMES petrochemicals markets defy reality, on the occasions when pricing moves out-of-synchronicity with the underlying nature of demand. This is the case with benzene today (see the above pricing chart) as my ICIS colleague Truong Mellor describes, in this excellent Insight article. He says that: *European Benzene pricing has been bullish, as […]
Get Behind China
By John Richardson THE blog is often accused of being pessimistic. We are not. We are just realistic. It was realistic last November to anticipate that China’s new leaders would be dedicated to major economic reform. In fact, this was clear even earlier than that – back in February 2012 when the World Bank produced […]
Failure Of Central Bankers
Source of graph: Reuters By John Richardson THE Federal Reserve has got it badly wrong, and could compound its mistake by launching a third round of quantitative easing (QE3), warns Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets and global macro at Morgan Stanley. “The first two rounds of quantitative easing fuelled a commodity bubble, increased […]
Growing Uncertainties Cloud Chemicals Outlook
By John Richardson THE global growth outlook grows ever murkier as a result of credit tightening in China (or is the problem instead continued strong growth in lending?), inflation problems throughout Asia, possible monetary tightening in the West, the direction of oil prices and the Japanese tsunami-earthquake. We feel that this is making the rest […]
Asian Inflation And Vietnam Polyolefins
Guess who’s coming to Christmas dinner Source of picture: biology.ucf.edu By John Richardson THE widespread problem of surging inflation in Asia ex-Japan is a major threat to petrochemicals demand growth in 2011. Governments need to put the brakes on to prevent economies from overheating. But the problem is that raising interest rates could […]
December Polyolefin Price-Rise Bid Will Fail
By John Richardson and Malini Hariharan in Shanghai A TWO-TIER China polyolefin market had developed in China over the last couple of years – but the $64,000 question right now is: At which of these two levels will most business be settled during December? The ever-volatile Dalian Commodity Exchange determines the day-by-day sentiment, while overseas […]
Chemicals And Polymer Prices Behave As We Predicted
By John Richardson AS the blog had anticipated would happen, there were sharp retreats in some chemicals and polymers pricing late last week on the steep declines in equity and crude prices. Polyethylene (PE) fell by $70-130/tonne, according to our colleagues at ICIS pricing, as the Dalian Commodity Exchange once again demonstrated that it has become […]
Oversupply In Petchems Still On The Way
Perhaps not just yet…. By John Richardson COULD it be that some chemicals industry players and observers, in the great galloping rush to join the supercycle stampede, have got ahead of themselves in predicting that we are already through the bottom of the margins trough? This distinct possibility was raised by Joe Duffy, consultant with […]
Petchem Pricing Faces Big Declines
By John Richardson THE wheels have started to come off the wagon – as we have been warning about over the past week or so – as a result of a broad sell-off in equities and commodities. Inflation concerns in China and elsewhere, the result of all the hot money flowing into emerging markets due to QE2, […]
Jump to page: