They always say the best form of flattery is immitation and so thanks to my colleague Paul Hodges for this graph indicating a huge surge in China’s polyethylene imports – courtesy of data from Edwin Pang of Credit Suisse. I agree with Paul in the latest post on his blog, Chemicals & The Economy, that […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 […]
Back to the Serious Stuff: Fitch issues China warning
As I’ve been warning on this blog for some time, the explosion of credit in China has created a great deal of paper-bottomed optimism over the recovery. Fitch, the ratings agency, has just raised its macro-prudential risk indicator ffor China from category 1 (safe) to category 3 (Iceland et al) because of the lending surge […]
Do you need a Joseph Kennedy moment?
Referring to the famous story about how Joseph Kennedy sold his shares on the eve of the Wall Street Crash after being given investment tips by a shoe-shine boy, my answer to the above is a definitive YES. Over the course of rest of this week I am going to detail why I think reports […]
I don’t want to gloat but I told you so….
It looks like olefins and aromatics prices are on the retreat in Asia as I predicted earlier this month. I only feel slightly smug because it seems obvious that naphtha was a big driver – and that markets were being talked up by producers desperate to recover monumental Q4 losses. There will be lots more […]
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