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Chemicals and the Economy

Boom/Gloom Index slips as financial markets jump

January was, as usual, a good month for the optimists in the financial community. They filled the media with confident predictions of sustained and high levels of global economic growth. China will apparently soon be booming under its new leadership, the Abe government in Japan will quickly reverse 20 years of deflation, whilst the US […]

Global economy faces difficult 2013

Its now 4 years since the blog published its first New Year Outlook in ICB. Then it was in a small minority when advising CEOs “to prepare for a marathon not a sprint” in dealing with the financial crisis. And very few accepted its suggestion that it was “unlikely that governments will quickly find a […]

August highlights

Many readers have been taking a well-earned break over the past few weeks. The blog also continues to gain large numbers of new readers, as the financial crisis intensifies. As usual, therefore, it is highlighting key posts during August, to help you catch up as you return to the office. Boom/Gloom Index suggests markets on […]

US core inflation at lowest-ever level

In one of its first posts, at the time of the ill-fated Access deal for Lyondell in July 2007, the blog highlighted the strange divergence that had developed between the front pages of the newspapers, and their business coverage: “If you read the financial pages of your newspaper, everything sounds rosy. But if you turn […]

Chemical companies have mixed views on outlook

The blog’s regular review of quarterly company results presents a mixed picture. Compared to a year ago, some have certainly become more optimistic – Dow, for example, are now “confident in a sustained global recovery“, whereas in 2009 they did “not count on material improvements in market conditions”. But others, whilst pleased with current results, […]

Budgeting for Uncertainty

When elephants fight, those around them need to be cautious. And this is the prospect for 2011-13, as the Western countries try to force the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to export less and import more, the so-called ‘rebalancing’ strategy. Thus Budgeting for Uncertainty seems the right title for the blog’s annual Outlook for […]

2011 Budgets

The blog will publish its annual Budget Outlook for 2011 next weekend. And so as usual, its now time to review last year’s Outlook. Past performance may not be a perfect guide to future outcomes. But it is one of the best that we have. The 2010 Outlook was titled ‘Budgeting for a New Normal’, […]

Boom/Gloom Index indicates downturn underway

Last month’s IeC Boom/Gloom Index showing a worrying weakness in sentiment, particularly when the world’s major stock markets had actually recorded good performances in July, albeit on low volume. But as the chart shows, this month confirms the downturn reading, with the Index (blue column) below the 4.0 level. Further confirmation of this reading comes […]

Boom/Gloom Index slips to downturn level

There was good and bad news from the latest IeC Boom/Gloom Index. The good news was that the Austerity reading fell quite sharply. Markets have moved on from the Greek crisis. And confidence seems to have been restored, at least temporarily, by the results of the ‘stress tests’ on the major European banks. But the […]

Fear of Austerity replaces hopes of Green Shoots

A year ago, the blog launched its IeC Boom/Gloom Index. This was based on the concept that markets are driven by both sentiment and fundamentals. And whilst fundamentals can be understood by analysing hard data (eg auto sales, housing starts), it is equally important to understand sentiment, and what markets think will happen next. Analysing […]

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