By John Richardson WE will get round to writing about the impact of US propane pricing on the operating rates of new Chinese propane dehydrogenation (PDH) –to-polypropylene (PP) investments, as we promised yesterday. Honestly, we will – trust us – and we will also eventually talk about how China’s methanol-to-olefins (MTO) start-ups might be a lot less than […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China: “Just When I Thought I Was Out….”
By John Richardson THE BLOG woke up this morning determined to write about something else, but, as Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”. What stopped us writing about US propane prices and what this might mean for Chinese propane dehydrogenation-polypropylene (PP) start-ups this […]
China Markets And Commentators In Denial
By John Richardson SOME chemical market players remain in denial or have yet to grasp the real problem in China, as is the case with quite a few financial journalists. Here is why: A widely-held assumption is that we cannot read too much into the few sets of data that have been released so far […]
Researching China Credit And Growth
By John Richardson A lot of the focus in polyethylene (PE) markets at the moment is on supply and on what impact this might have on the key China market during 2014. Crunching this data will always remain a crucial part of assessing all petrochemicals markets, but, in China, do we need other tools as […]
China’s Latest Credit Crunch: What It Says About 2014
By John Richardson CHINA continues to cross the river by feeling the stones and anyone in the chemicals industry who says that they have a clear idea of where this is going to end is probably being more than a little disingenuous. There will be a lot of experimentation as China tries to overhaul its […]
Irrationality And Staying Solvency
By John Richardson JOHN Maynard Keynes, the famous economist and speculator , once said “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” In other words, if you are a trader you can sit around for ages waiting for the fundamentals to drive any particular market, and, as a result, go bust – […]
It Is Not A Question Of If, But Rather When
By John Richardson IT is not a question if, but rather when Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang decide that enough is enough and get on with tackling China’s growing financial imbalances. That is if they don’t want the whole house of cards to eventually collapse, which we believe is not the case. These imbalances have […]
China PE Demand Increases Further
By John Richardson THE great polyethylene (PE) mystery hunt continues. As the chart above shows, China’s apparent PE demand (imports plus domestic production) grew by 14% in January-July 2013 compared with the same period in 2011, according to Global Trade Information Services and official government data. This compares with a 13% increase recorded for January-June […]
China Debt Dwarfs The Fed’s Quantitative Easing
YESTERDAY we highlighted how a crucial government meeting takes place in November in China. This could well outline the blueprint for economic reform over the next few years. A major challenge facing China’s new leaders is the unsustainable surge in debt since 2008 – a problem we have been highlighting for several years now. […]
Cheaper Credit Drives Inventory Building
By John Richardson A DRAMATIC dip in the cost of short-term financing seems to further explain why China’s manufacturers have ramped-up their inventories of raw materials. When raw-material prices, including those of petrochemicals, start to rise (see the example of polyethylene above), and credit is cheaper, the instinctive response is to stock-up ahead of […]
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