Weaker current fibres and clothing CMCI, upswing for future trends

LONDON (ICIS)–The majority of indicators in the European fibre market became more negative in July, according to ICIS Chemical Market Confidence Index (CMCI) data on Friday.

Current indicators weakened with market participants’ views of business conditions, order book volumes and profitability falling for the second month running, although some future predictions swung in a more optimistic direction after rebounding from a low point.

Order book volumes saw the largest month-on-month drop, although they remained in positive territory. The index for current business conditions swung into negative territory after being positive in June.

This drop in confidence may represent an increase in uncertainty following the UK’s vote to exit the EU. The IMF has also recently cut its growth forecast for the UK and the eurozone.

However, expectations on business conditions over the next year became significantly more confident in July after falling sharply in June.

Profitability expectations were also higher for the next 12 months, although the trend was less pronounced and expectations were still down compared with May.

Order book volumes, on the other hand, saw an unchanged trend from June with lower volumes expected over the next 12 months

The rebound in profitability and business expectations in July could represent a stabilisation following a negative set of predictions in June, with the index recording a full set of negative indicators for that month.

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 indexes 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

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