By John Richardson A NEW report by the World Bank on China, summarised on the slide below, supports what we argued in chapter 6 our e-book, Boom, Gloom & The New Normal: That without the success of efforts to reform the economy, the country risks a significant slowdown. Those reform efforts, detailed in the […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Butadiene An Extreme Example
By John Richardson BUTADIENE is an extreme example of what my fellow blogger Paul Hodges described yesterday as happening across several major petrochemicals markets. Panicky buyers have, just as they did last year, “bought forward” in the hope that by so doing they will hedge against even higher feedstock costs in the future. But this […]
Europe Markets Lure Asian Polyolefins
By John Richardson EXACTLY the same scenario is playing out in European polyolefin markets, as in Latin America and possibly the US, my ICIS colleague Linda Naylor reported last Friday. High polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) prices in Europe have led to increased offers for re-exported material from China, according to Linda – our European […]
Pricing To Struggle For The Rest of 2012
By John Richardson Further confirmation of the themes we raised yesterday emerged from an interview with a senior polyolefin industry source, with some important new analysis. Profitability in Asia is the worst of any of the three regions, he told us, although volumes remain good. In the US, he characterised demand as “pretty reasonable”, but […]
A Palpable Sense Of Panic
By John Richardson THE blog has sought to add to the debate during the four years it has been operating by thinking around the big macro-economic issues, and constantly keeping in touch with our market contacts at “ground level” in the petrochemicals industry, in an attempt to assess where markets might be heading. We haven’t […]
US Cooks The Golden Goose
By John Richardson THE blog would sincerely like to find evidence that it has been wrong and report a strong, sustainable recovery in China’s polyethylene (PE) market. Alas, however, the rise in pricing of around $100/tonne over the last four weeks appears to have been almost entirely the result of increased trader activity and producers […]
It All Depends On Your Time Frame
By John Richardson HOW long a recovery lasts is always relative to your investment horizons. For example, if you are a day trader in the Dalian Commodity Exchange’s futures contract in linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), a rebound might only need to last 24 hours for you to make money. And if you are trading in […]
“Known Unknowns” And China
By John Richardson IF the blog had a dollar for every time we had read reports about Chinese growth being constantly buoyed by rising domestic income levels and increasing urbanisation, we would probably be as rich as a mid-level executive in a state-owned enterprise (in other words, very rich – way beyond such an executive’s […]
An All Mighty Dalian Muddle
By John Richardson UNDERSTANDING the Dalian Commodity Exchange’s futures contract in RMB-priced linear low-density polyethylene ((LLDPE) requires an understanding of what the traders are up to at any particular point in time, as this is almost entirely a speculators’ market. So, what happened late last year is very illuminating. The chart below shows a sharp spike […]
Confidence Is Often Relative
By John Richardson CONFIDENCE can be very relative. So, compared with late Q4 last year when global cracker and derivatives markets ground to a virtual halt, perhaps it was inevitable that January would see some kind of rebound in the industry’s mood. Deep operating rate cuts in Northeast Asia have been a factor behind this […]
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