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 […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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. […]
Asia anxious over the wrong kind growth
Like this for a while longer? Source of Picture: Bahnuprasad.net/blog The question, of course, is what is the right kind of growth? If you are trader of whatever kind the only growth you care about is in aset values. In other words the more bubbles the better and as long as you get out in […]
China polyethylene inventories are high
A Mars Bar feast in store if crude hits $30/bbl again Source of Picture: Amazon.com Polyethylene (PE) inventories in China at the second and third local distributor levels are at very high levels, two reliable industry sources have told us. This has led to some confusion in the […]
Will Fiscal Rebalancing Trigger A Trade War?
Ron Kirk faces a tough balancing act Source of Picture: United States Mission – Geneva “The rebuilt American economy must be export-oriented and less consumption-oriented,” said Larry Summers, Director of the US President’s National Economic Council, earlier this month. But, as The Economist says in this article, this will be a little like turning a […]
Is Dalian setting the markets?
Make your own mind up about the role of the Dalian Commodity Exchange linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) futures contracts from the interviews below. The first quote is from Sinopec – from an ICIS news story. There then follows my interviews with a major Asian producer and a consultant based in Asia. […]
Where Have All The Flowers/Polymers Gone?
Source of Picture: http://backincccp.blogspot.com/ Peter Seeger’s most-famous song (being performed here by Pete, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie) was “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” Perhaps a new version should be cut entitled, “Where Have All The Polymers Gone?” when you start to piece together China’s imports during the H1 2009 versus plastic-production […]
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 […]
China’s Great Property Gamble
Source of Picture: Chinasnippets.com Perhaps this post will help explain why a perplexed Hong Kong-based financial analyst wrote to me the other day, in response to my probably failed efforts to adequately explain rising chemicals demand in China: “I stilll don’t understand why polymer imports from PP, PE, PVC, and even SM (+15% per month […]
Credit Expansion Linked To Dalian Boom?
Source of Picture: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/ We have just started doing our research and so more details later – but see attached this Excel spreadsheet – lendingVDalianOI.xls It compares the increase in lending from China’s banks with the amount of open interest in the Dalian Commodity Exchange’s linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) futures contracts. Volume traded on the […]
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