Source of Picture: www.autospies.com Not an easy answer and not one much suited to a few paragraphs of blogging. But here’s one thought as the competitive environment becomes a great deal more difficult due to new Middle East capacity and the potential for China to move towards self-sufficiency in polyethylene and polypropylene: Have a chat […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Calling all CFOs: Ready To Take The Plunge?
Source of picture: oxo.typepad.com Leaving China aside for a change – where the speculative frenzy continues apace -Paul Satchell, chemicals analyst, has a four-step measure for assessing whether the US and Europe are really out of the woods. “Purchasing behaviour is strongly influenced by a customer’s confidence, and, in the current context, four distinct phases […]
China inventory sentiment survey
Peering through the fog On the theme of data again, in the ideal world it might be possible to send thousands of hardworking foot solders out into the field in China to chase down every warehouse of polymers and count every single pallet of polyolefins. Not not really – don’t talk nonsense; in reality, this […]
Lies, damned lies and data
“Excuse me, are you sure about that?” Source of Picture: bshort.org A wise man said to me recently: “All data is wrong; all you can do is make sure you are consistently wrong”. Now this is absolutely not meant to be any criticism whatsoever of what consultants or other market observers do for a living. […]
The insidious rise of the Internet….
“Bob, I think I we should give this up as I can’t get a wireless connection and I couldn’t be bothered to talk to anyone.” Source of Picture: Faculty.SMU.Edu . ……and the effect on the quality of data and analysis is one of my big concerns – particularly at a time like this when petrochemical […]
Futures, Recycling Behind China PE Mystery?
Picture: The China Daily “I’ve given up trying to read the polyolefin market in China. I just can’t figure out what’s going on,” said a senior source with a major North American producer late last week. “I keep returning to the fundamentals and cannot understand why prices have risen so steeply since mid-February.” Him and […]
Where is the real demand recovery?
Have you ever been away on holiday and have cut yourself off from from work, only to return and find that nothing has changed? So it seems in polyolefin markets. As this blog has been writing about for several months, the recovery in pricing seems to have been mainly feedstock-driven as this article from ICIS […]
Don’t You Wish You Could Be Yourself?
Picture: The Daily Mail Ok, I lied – I am having trouble getting back into my petrochemicals bubble and so this post is not about polypropylene. Apologies to all those disappointed C3 H6 molecules out there. I was sharing lunch with a highly demotivated Singapore-based chemicals industry employee recently and the great British 1970s sitcom, […]
Raining on the Optimists’ Parade
Source: The Guardian newspaper Apologies for letting this bog slip again. I am on leave, but still pondering where on earth we are heading. This makes a welcome relief from staring up at the grey skies and thinking “summer? What summer?” Yes, I am on leave in the UK and Wimbledon is about to start. […]
China borrowing from the future?
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement over the rebound in the Chinese economy and miss underlying weaknesses which point to some major problems ahead. To some extent, in a desperate effort to compensate for collapsing export trade, China might have borrowed from the future in order to achieve a swift recovery. “The […]
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