Source of picture: The Nymex To continue the same theme of earlier this week, I agree with my fellow blogger Paul Hodges when he warns that OPEC’s price target for $75-80/bbl could nip the nascent economic recovery in the bud. As he quite rightly argues, inventory building ahead of further crude rises in 2007-08 occurred […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The next oil shock and petrochemicals
Apologies for letting this blog slip again, but have been busy trying to make a crust presenting ICIS training courses. And so as a bonus for our army of avid readers, here are my extended thoughts on the above: In the midst of the economic crisis it would be so easy to bury your head […]
Maybe it’s not as bleak as I’ve made out…
Consensus opinion tends to swing firmly in one direction and then the other. For example, in the good old days of 2007 you would have been pretty hard-pressed to find many in the chemicals industry who saw anything but a mildly cyclical downturn. But the widely-held view now – that we are facing five years […]
It’s about scaling down rather than up
One of the new skills being learnt in this current crisis is how to run plants efficiently at low operating rates. “It’s funny that for years now, we’ve worried about how to scale up profitably. Now industry is faced with just the opposite, how to scale down profitably,” says Mark Matzopoulos, chief operating officer at […]
Net lending declines by 70-80% in Q2 in China
This very interesting note from Jun Ma, chief economist for Greater China at Deutsche Bank (see the end of this post) offers evidence to support what this blog has been worried about for some time – the quality of China’s economic rebound. The government would presumably be less concerned about the sharp increase in loan […]
How long can bear-market rallies last?
The current run-up in equities might go on and on – perhaps even for several years, according to economist Russell Napier. But he warns, in this excellent video interview with FT journalist John Authers, that an extended boom in equities doesn’t necessarily mean the economic fundamentals are sound. For example,the stock market rally after the […]
Aussie on a losing wicket
The timing of when to strike the ball is everything in the wonderful sport of cricket – and also, apparently, in the American pastime of baseball. An Australian banker is fond of reminding the English how much better his country is at playing cricket. But his gloating doesn’t extend to how well he’s been timing […]
Micro-management gone too far?
micro-management, human resources, APIC, commodity chemicals, CEOs, credit control, financial meltdown
Reasons to be cheerful?
Any excuse to make a reference to the late, great and wonderful Ian Dury. I sent the following email to my friend in response to the stock market rallies and the green shoots of optimism seemingly turning into beautiful May flowers: “I take it nothing can has fundamentally changed? The confidence couldn’t possibly be so […]
US-Asia Propylene arbitrage closes
arbitrage, US-Asia exports, financial meltdown, piracy, Somalia, ICIS news
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