Just an anomaly? Source: American Chemistry Council By John Richardson FEEDSTOCK advantage is, of course, crucially important, but so is demand. And yet the only subject that most people wanted to talk about in any depth at last...
The excellent article below from Paul Taylor at Reuters, which with his permission we publish in full below, describes how the European crisis is far from over, despite the hopes of financial markets following Mario Draghi's pledge "to whatever it...
By John Richardson ALTHOUGH overall Chinese polyethylene (PE) demand, as we feared would happen, has fallen back to Q1-Q3 2012 levels (current sentiment suggests that it could be even lower), higher-value segments of the industry continue to do very well....
By John Richardson OIL prices could fall to as low as $35-40 a barrel or might slip no further than $60-70 a barrel, depending on which analyst you belief. And we know of one global polyolefins company...
By John Richardson HOW long will the relief rally last in oil and equity markets following the Greek election results? Sadly, the answer is not long, because difficult discussions lay ahead for the New Democracy party as it tries to...
By John Richardson THE total value of export orders at the latest Canton Trade Fair, which finished this weekend, declined by 4.8% compared with the previous event in October last year. This is the first decline in the value...
By John Richardson Word for word, see below what an Asian polyolefins trader told us yesterday: "This year has been absolutely terrible, the worst I can remember in eight years in this business, and even worse than 2008. There is...
By John Richardson EARLIER this week we talked about the possibility that China might devalue the Yuan rather than allow it to further appreciate. We have since been told by a senior chemicals industry source that this is exactly...
By John Richardson IT seems inevitable that petrochemical markets will respond positively to the Chinese government's decision to reduce bank-reserve requirements by 50 basis points. There will quite likely be a relief rally in the Dalian Commodity Exchange's futures contract...
By John Richardson AT first glance it might seem strange that the Dalian Commodity Exchange's linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) futures contract has fluctuated so dramatically on news emanating from the Eurozone. The May 2012 contract - the one most actively traded...
By Malini Hariharan Asian spot prices for polyester raw materials continued to fall last week as concern on lack of buying support from the China market where concerns about the health of the global economy dampened sentiment. Purified terephthalic...
By John Richardson ALL of us would love to be able to see into the future. Chapter 4 of our new eBook, 'Boom, Gloom and the New Normal', does just this. It offers 10 predictions about how the world will...
By John Richardson THE fact that the focus has turned to what China might be able to do to once again rescue the global economy reinforces just how important it has become for global growth prospects. For the chemicals...
By Nigel Davis and John Richardson On the financial markets it depends when investors feel confident enough to step back into shares. An analyst on Tuesday asked who would be willing to catch a falling knife? But there are already...
By John Richardson AS the global economy enters a new recession the great hope, as we discussed yesterday, is that China once again steps in with a stimulus package as did in late 2008.But can China risk a repeat of...
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