I’ll be posting less frequently this week – today, obviously, Wednesday and also on Friday – as I am on leave. By John Richardson HERE’S a brief history of the last seven years of denial about China, the root cause of which is, I think, the fact that most people cannot remember anything but a […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Expect More Volatility, Uncertainty As China Reforms Continue
By John Richardson MOST Asian stock markets took a hammering on Wednesday because of the sharp decline in Chinese equities. So did commodity markets, as my colleague Nigel Davis pointed out in this Insight article when he wrote: Copper prices hit new 2015 lows, iron ore futures were down sharply. Plastics futures prices plunged on […]
Oil Markets Return To Supply And Demand Realities
By John Richardson ONLY a couple of months ago a lot of people seemed confident that oil prices had settled down in the region $60-80 a barrel. At that time, though, in my 13 May seven-point guide to oil markets in H2, I flagged up some of the risks ahead. These risks remain, on top of […]
China Stock Markets Were Never A “Magic Pill”
By John Richardson THE good news is that only an estimated one in 15 Chinese people at the very most trade in stocks compared with more than half of Americans. But the bad news is that this one in 15 is higher than it was around a year ago, when China’s stock markets first began […]
Greece No Vote Exposes Eurozone Flaws
By John Richardson A MAN who is drunk on somebody else’s money attempts to cross the road without checking for oncoming traffic and is hit by car. Both of his arms are broken. An ambulance arrives with a team of medics on board who loaned the man the money. The medics tell him this: “This […]
Margin Upswings Will Be Shorter And Shorter
By John Richardson A GOOD chart can quite often by worth many thousands of words with the above chart serving as an excellent example. You can see how in June, scheduled and unscheduled shutdowns of Asia-Pacific ethylene capacity exceeded 6.3m tonnes – the biggest total by far since at least 2011. Markets have been further […]
How China Will Narrow Its Income Gap
By John Richardson THE above chart is part of China’s New Normal, and so helps us to understand the future of the country’s chemicals and polymers supply and demand balances. As you can see, the gap between its richest and poorest provinces remains substantial despite some progress in narrowing this gap since 2002. The success […]
Jump to page: