By John Richardson Quite often, a chart is worth many thousands of words. The above chart, from Bloomberg, shows the divergence between the soaring S&P 500 index and US macro-economic indicators. The theory is that soaring equity values will be...
By John Richardson SEVERAL major petrochemical companies only have one scenario for China, which is that its economy will continue to grow at a rapid rate, the blog has been told by people working for these companies. Similarly, as fellow blogger...
By John Richardson POLYESTER producers, and their raw-material suppliers, enjoyed a huge boost to their profitability between October 2008 and March 2011 when cotton prices increased by 468 percent from 40 cents/lb to $2.27/lb. This led to polyester...
By John Richardson CHINA'S synthetic fibres chain continues to show serious signs of distress as a result of weak domestic and export demand, according to my ICIS colleagues, Judith Wang and Becky Zhang. Traders in monoethylene glycol (MEG) must have believed...
By Malini Hariharan The polyester chain is feeling the strain of poor Chinese demand. Weak export demand and Chinese government policy are also impacting this sector, as is the case in polyolefins. A further factor behind the problems in the polyester...
By John Richardson RISING cotton prices might well have been the single-biggest factor on the strength in the synthetic textiles chain for the last year. Other major factors have obviously been the surge in crude and supply constraints in...
By John Richardson THE blog remains extremely worried that there is about to be a major sell-off of commodities in general, including petrochemicals, as conditions right now feel very similar to those in 2008. Whether we will face a...
By Malini Hariharan Global monoethylene glycol (MEG) markets are likely to remain robust in 2011, supported by strong demand from China and a lack of new capacity additions, a top executive from MEGlobal told the blog at the 5th Gulf...
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...
Source of picture: tycoonreport.com By John Richardson This is a very dangerous time for petrochemicals producers as they attempt to separate real, sustainable demand from feedstock-cost related price rises and speculation. A bubble - as we discussed yesterday...
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