By John Richardson THE end of China’s Golden Week holidays, which ran from 1-7 October, has represented an opportunity for some polyolefins traders. “Stocks were low before the holidays, and, as a result, once business activity resumed in earnest on 10 October, we have seen a considerable uptick in buying from the converters,” said one […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The Attention Span Of Commodity Markets
By John Richardson PARTICIPANTS in commodity and financial markets sometimes appear to have very short attention spans. But they are merely doing their jobs by seeking to stretch out rallies as long as possible through claiming everything that was being discussed a few months, weeks or even days ago is suddenly invalid. (see the above […]
A Chance To Win £100
By John Richardson SICK and tired of wracking your brains trying to figure out where the China polyolefins market is going? Are you weary of the Eurozone debt crisis and the threat that US Congress will fail to raise the debt ceiling? Then take a break from hardscrabble petrochemicals markets to take part in our ICIS Holiday […]
US Threat To Asian Polyolefins
So far so good…lack of arbitrage in 2012 By John Richardson Despite a strong recovery in China’s polyethylene (PE) prices and sales over the last month-and-a-half, producers are viewing the coming year with great trepidation. One of the wild cards is how the US producers behave in 2013, as we also discussed in November. Faced […]
China Polyolefins Recovery Continues…..
…..For Now By John Richardson RELATIVE to most of 2012 – when China’s polyolefins market was in dire straits – November, December and early January have been excellent for traders who took the right positions. At least one producer has also reporting a strong recovery in sales. “I thought there would be a mini-rebound […]
The View From Ground Level Is Different
By John Richardson The macroeconomic headwinds are building, making it hard for some of those at the ground level in Asian polyolefin markets to foresee anything but fragile and tough trading conditions. This is in marked contrast to the fairly optimistic outlook presented by some of the big, well-integrated and differentiated chemicals and polymer companies […]
Polyolefin End-users Assume The Risk
By John Richardson POLYOLEFIN end-users in China and Southeast Asia began to re-stock in significant numbers last week on anticipation that supply is going to remain tight for the next few weeks at least, the blog has been told. “There was a feeling among the converters that because of scheduled maintenance work in August and […]
The Edginess, The Nervousness Continues
By John Richardson THE edgy and nervous nature of the recovery in Asian polyolefin markets became even more apparent from discussions the blog held with traders and producers during a visit to Singapore last week. Such was the uncertainty that there were mid-week reports of falls in pricing. By Friday, though, one producer told us […]
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