The excellent weekly report from the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has a number of interesting insights:
• As the chart shows, global chemical production seems to have bottomed. All regions are, however, now showing a decline versus 2008.
• Separately, the ACC has updated its valuable survey of the state of inventories down the US polymer chain. This suggests that these were finally being rebuilt in May and June, for the first time in a year.
• Equally, they note that total inventory of existing US homes reduced to 9.4 months, with sales stable at similar levels to June 2008.
The latter is a critical leading indicator for chemical sales. But according to the US Realtors Association, the housing market is now seeing 2 quite different sets of drivers:
• Homes priced under $250k are selling fast, often via foreclosure, and inventories are down to 6 months
• But homes priced over $1m are seeing very little activity, with inventories now at 20 months.
The question, of course, is what happens next? The risk is that rising unemployment starts to force owners of more expensive homes to sell on a distressed basis. This would clear inventories, but would also cause further problems for the financial system, as lenders would then have to go through another round of debt write-offs.
Hopefully, these owners will be able to hang on. But even then, the chances of a V-shaped recovery remain low. As the ACC note, it is likely that "headwinds from massive deleveraging and lingering fallout from housing will offset the typical inventory bounce".