By John Richardson AS you waited for your flight, you picked up a nice glossy magazine that talked about the “Asian economic miracle” in the kind of one-dimensional language that might have got some of you into this mess in the first place. You then returned to your chemicals company to read report after report […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The Hypnotic Allure Of Emerging Markets
By John Richardson A GLEAMING new skyscraper in downturn Beijing, Bangkok, Mumbai, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur made for fantastic TV viewing, especially if a photogenic reporter was standing in front of such a building. The reporter would then talk about “Asia’s rising middle classes” as the camera panned-out to people queueing outside Louis Viton and Cartier […]
China’s Yuan: No Room For Complacency On Devaluation
By John Richardson IT IS comforting to think that the China Yuan devaluation story is all but over. But only three months ago, most people thought there was nothing that wrong with the Chinese economy and just look where that has got us. One reason for comfort on the Yuan story is being derived from […]
Six Big Risks Of Fed Rate Hike And Some Long-Term Realism
By John Richardson IF you thought the 2013 Taper Tantrum was bad enough, I am afraid you have seen nothing yet. When the Fed finally does raise interest rates, either this year or next year, these are just six results: Whilst the perception out there is that emerging market sovereign debt is not as bad as it […]
Five Misunderstandings About Oil And Maybe A Sixth One
By John Richardson THE first misunderstanding about oil prices, which everyone now accepts was wrong, arose because people took too much notice of existing cost-per-barrel economics and so assumed that from October of last year, the US would close down huge amounts of shale-oil capacity. This didn’t happen because a.) Costs were lower than anticipated […]
Asian Ethylene Markets: What We Definitely Know
By John Richardson FORECASTING the absolute future price of any petrochemical has always been difficult and if you are ever exactly right this will be down more to good luck than good judgement. And the problem is that when you have been right once, and you make a big song and dance about it, everyone […]
China PP Exports Jump 38% On Jobs Drive
Polyolefins markets in Asia are not behaving in the way that they used to behave. For value-added analysis of these changes, and for price and margin forecasts for the region, contact john.richardson@icis.com for details of how to subscribe to our Asian Polypropylene and Asian Polyethylene forecast reports. By John Richardson NOT everything in […]
The Real US Employment Story
By John Richardson THE “Will they won’t they?” debate became even more intense on Friday following the release of the US Labor Department’s employment report for August. Whether or not the Fed will raise interest rates in September, or at least by the end of this year, seemed no clearer as the report showed that […]
Oil Prices: A Turkey Becomes Airborne, Danger Ahead
By John Richardson OIL prices rose yesterday, despite the latest Energy Administration Information (EIA) report for the week ending 28 August revealing that: Total US commercial stocks grew by 5.7 million barrels a day – and at 1.29 billion barrels are the highest level ever reached. (Number crunching, courtesy of David Hutton of the PVM […]
Myth No 5: China Has Enough Money To Bail Itself Out
By John Richardson MYTH No 1 about China is that the rise of its middle classes guarantees a prosperous economic future. No need for a Plan B we are told. Just follow the money by investing in lots of autos and other manufacturing capacity, often “high end”, and everything will be fine – along with, […]