US chem shares rebound after Thursday sell-off

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Most US-listed shares of chemical companies recovered a portion of their losses on Friday, following a large sell-off that saw many stock prices fall by more than 10%.

That sell-off took place on Thursday, and it was the worst since mid-March.

The table below shows Friday’s performance of the US-listed shares followed by ICIS.

	$ Current Price	$ Change	% Change
AdvanSix	12.90	0.92	7.64
Axalta Coating Systems	22.20	0.50	2.28
Braskem	9.81	-0.29	-2.87
Celanese	88.23	2.67	3.12
Dow	41.17	1.91	4.85
DuPont	51.03	1.05	2.10
Eastman	69.69	3.82	5.80
HB Fuller	40.02	2.40	6.37
Huntsman	17.99	0.39	2.20
Ingevity	50.19	2.08	4.32
Kraton	16.00	1.30	8.84
Kronos Worldwide	9.65	0.23	2.44
LyondellBasell	66.61	2.71	4.23
Methanex	20.56	0.91	4.61
NewMarket	391.72	-3.51	-0.89
Olin	13.14	0.38	2.98
PolyOne	25.93	0.98	3.91
PPG	101.71	2.15	2.16
RPM International	73.53	1.69	2.35
Sherwin-Williams	545.09	-1.23	-0.23
Stepan	94.52	1.29	1.38
Chemours	14.96	1.36	10.00
Trinseo	21.67	1.27	6.23
Tronox	7.09	0.34	5.04
Univar	16.26	0.53	3.34
Venator Materials	2.15	0.31	16.85
Westlake Chemical	52.98	1.61	3.13

The general stock market also rebounded, but the strength of that recovery weakened as the day progresses.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by more than 800 points earlier on Friday. It lost a large portion of those gains, as shown in the following table.

	12-Jun	Change	%
Dow Jones Industrial Average	25,605.54	477.37	1.90
S&P 500	3,041.31	39.21	1.31
Dow Jones US Chemicals Index	579.71	11.82	2.08
S&P 500 Chemicals Industry Index	580.90	10.52	1.84

Oil markets were mixed, as shown in the following table.

	12-Jun	11-Jun	%
Brent	38.73	38.55	0.47%
WTI	36.26	36.34	-0.22%

Friday’s faltering rebound came as some states in the US are reporting an upswing in coronavirus infections while they loosen travel and work restrictions.

For the US as a whole, total cases have reached 2.02m, up by nearly 22,000 from the previous day, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In Europe, chemical shares were steady and lagged behind the general market.

EU industrial production had fallen by 17.3%, the steepest decline on record.

In Asia, chemicals shares fell.

Click here to view the ICIS Coronavirus, oil price crash – impact on chemicals topic page.
Additional reporting by Tom Brown and Nurluqman Suratman
Thumbnail image by Shutterstock