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Dow Jones' 1st year fall worse than 1929

The chart presents a sobering view of recent stock market performance. It shows (courtesy of chartoftheday.com) the Dow's performance in the first year of all bear markets since 1900. Since its 2007 peak, the Dow has fallen more than in any other bear market, even more than in 1929.

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 12-02-2008
US entered recession a year ago - official

Last March, the blog supported Warren Buffett's statement that "by any commonsense definition, the US is in recession". I also wrote an article for ICB in April, " Building your defences " to suggest how companies could develop contingency plans to deal with the "real threat"...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 12-01-2008
Hope for recovery, plan for downturn

Surprisingly, our 7th European conference this week in Cologne (co-organised with ICIS), was one of our most successful. Delegate numbers were down, as companies cut travel budgets. But those attending said they had gained much more, than if they had stayed in the office. For a start, there was the opportunity...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-30-2008
Financial Times recognises the blog

The Queen of England recently asked "Why did nobody see the financial crisis coming?" The Financial Times took the view that " Some did, Ma'am. Some did ." It then initiated a search for these people. Today's Financial Times now recognises some of those who correctly warned...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-29-2008
UK cuts sales tax to fight deflation

The UK's Finance Minister, Alistair Darling, was the first western leader to warn that the current recession was the worst in 60 years . He was also the first to effectively nationalise major banks, to stave off their collapse. Now he has become the first to try to tackle the real threat of deflation...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-25-2008
The end of the beginning

Last week's BASF announcement marked the end of Phase One of the downturn. This began over a year ago , with the first signs of financial crisis. Now, we will move into Phase Two - a long, multi-year recession, which will also include several bear-market rallies. The end of this "beginning"...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-23-2008
10 European crackers down

My colleague Bob Townsend is well known to many in the chemical industry as an olefins expert. He has pointed out today's most unusual situation in olefins markets. Normally, an unplanned outage by one or more crackers would cause major disruption. Yet today, 10 European crackers are down, for technical...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-21-2008
BASF sees "massive decline"

6 weeks ago , I warned that "the scariest moment of my 30 year chemical career" was about to be repeated. This had been in 1980, when "for some weeks it seemed that demand for many petchem products had simply stopped". Three weeks later, the blog confirmed that "the moment it...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-19-2008
LyondellBasell debt downgraded, INEOS seeks waivers

Current market conditions are causing problems for everyone in the chemical industry. But as the blog has long feared, they are particularly testing those companies with higher debt levels. On Friday, Moody's announced a downgrading of the Corporate Family Rating of Lyondell Basell Industries to...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-18-2008
A low-key G-20 meeting

The first-ever G-20 meeting of Heads of State was a relatively quiet event , without the presence of President-elect Obama. Two main areas seem to have been discussed : • Regulatory reform, where finance ministers have been given until the end of March to work out new rules for the world's financial...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 11-18-2008

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