By John Richardson THEY are still getting it the wrong way round. Both the Financial Times and The Economist, have said over the last few days that weaker prospects for emerging markets are mainly the result of Fed tapering. We continue to think that this might be partly because of the great “unknown, unknown” that […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Global Equities, China, The Fed And Some Perspective
By John Richardson AS USUAL, everyone will take what they want and need to take, in order to protect their own interests, out of Monday – the worst day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average in seven months. This was followed by severe declines in several emerging market indices. Like everyone else in the somewhat […]
China’s About Turn: The Seven Global Implications
By John Richardson HISTORIANS will end up concluding that falling emerging market currencies and stock markets – the prelude to what could be a full-blown crisis – is really about China and not about the US Federal Reserve. The Fed is just a sideshow to the main event of what is going to drive not […]
China “Base Case” Indicates Another Good Year
By John Richardson LAST year was a tremendous year for polyethylene (PE) exporters to China, according to data provided by US-based International Trader Publications, the US-based trade data and analytics service. They conclude that China’s imports of high-density polyethylene (HPDE) and low-density PE (LDPE) posted strong gains. Volumes for 2013 were up 18% and 10%, respectively, versus […]
Getting China And The Fed The Wrong Way Round
By John Richardson MOST newspapers and wire services still seem to have got it in the wrong way round. Last week, as Argentina’s Peso crisis began, they continued to identify Fed tapering as the number one threat to emerging markets followed by China. But here’s a reminder: The Fed has spent some $3 trillion on […]
China Is “The Fragile One”
By John Richardson THE “Fragile Five” might, as we discussed on Monday, have become “The Exposed Eight” developing countries threatened by a disorderly Fed tapering. But what if, in all the focus on the Fed cutting back on quantitative easing, we have overlooked a far bigger withdrawal of central bank largesse – that which is […]
Oil Market Risks For 2014
By John Richardson PAUL Satchell, the UK-based chemicals analyst with glob investment bank Cannacord Genuity wrote in his December Volume Proxy* report, which was released earlier this month: “It has long been our opinion that real demand fundamentals in commodity chemicals have been so poor since mid-2010 that inventory cycles have become the prime determinant of […]
The Perils Of An Even Weaker Yen
By John Richardson YOU cannot turn 65-year-olds into 35-year-olds, no matter how much central bank stimulus you throw at the problem. This is why the real, underlying problem with Japan is its demographics which make all the current attempts to stimulate its way to stronger local growth pretty much futile. If there are not enough […]
Chemicals Companies Need To Prepare For Deflation in 2014
By John Richardson IF the US Fed’s polices are working why is AP Moller Mearsk – the shipping company which is widely seen as a proxy for global trade – cutting costs and reducing capacity? Probably because as Henny Sender wrote in the Financial Times: “It is clear that the Fed’s quantitative easing is not […]
Guaranteeing The “Trickle Down” Effect
By John Richardson THE average-paid worker in a US company has to work for more than a month to earn what her or his CEO will earn in just one hour, according to this video from Adam Mordecai – the social and political commentator. And in 2012, the richest 1% of the population took home […]
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