Europe benzene players confident on business outlook – July CMCI

LONDON (ICIS)–Participants in the European benzene chain are more confident over future business conditions, profitability and order book volumes than they were a month ago, analysis of the July ICIS Chemical Market Confidence Index (CMCI) showed Wednesday.

The only declines this month were in sentiment for current business conditions, which fell sharply into minus values, and order book volumes compared to 12 months ago which also shifted from a positive in the index into negative territory.

July saw the first full CMCI conducted since the UK’s vote to leave the EU, with the June data collected the week of the vote, making it impossible to tell the impact until now.

The overall Europe CMCI points to a potential shift to a seller’s market. 

Benzene chain, last three months

The newly established ICIS Europe CMCI aggregates sentiment from hundreds of petrochemical market players actively involved in price negotiations across more than 60 different markets.

The Europe CMCI runs from +100, to -100, with zero on each index representing neutral, or uncertain conditions, a negative score indicating bearish expectations and a positive score representing bullish expectations. The indices also gather sentiment on the comparison between the current situation and the situation across the past 12 months to give a complete picture of current market conditions and confidence. The information is gathered in the third week of each month.  A full methodology is available on request.

For more details on the overall Europe CMCI data, click here