LAST WEEK I challenged whether the longstanding “put option” for petrochemicals companies and investors would still apply to China 2022.
The put option rests on the well-proven notion that the worst things get in the short term, the better the immediate outlook because Beijing always rides to the rescue with big economic stimulus.
The challenge I posed to the put option was that China might only tinker around the edges of its Common Prosperity economic reforms.
By John Richardson NOBODY SHOULD be surprised that the developing world has fallen behind in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the region is a long way from recovering from the pandemic. Evidence to this effect emerged last week in comments made by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). […]
By John Richardson MANY OF US are very familiar with the feeling of sitting at home, waiting to hear whether we’ve got the job we really, really need to stay financially above water. So is the case with the developing world as it sits on the side lines of the G7 meeting in Cornwall, the […]
By John Richardson OK, I MAY have got this wrong. Inflation could be a bigger problem than I envisaged only three weeks ago. But if so, I would at least be in exalted company. A meeting of the US Federal Reserve concluded that generalised inflation was not a concern, and that “finished goods have not […]
By John Richardson IT REALLY IS EXTRAORDINARY how commentators continue to use year-on-year comparisons for the Chinese economy in H1 this year versus the first half of 2020. Demand was of course always going to be better in H2 2021, provided China maintained control over the pandemic, because the economy came to a virtual […]
By John Richardson TEN YEARS AGO, fellow blogger Paul Hodges and I first highlighted the leading role that changing demographics would play in reshaping petrochemicals supply and demand. We have been emphasising the importance of demographics ever since. Demographics have, of course, always been a critical shaper of economies throughout human history. But during […]
By John Richardson CHINESE government statements have always been incredibly important for fathoming the country’s economic direction and this year will be no exception. We need to constantly parse the tone of statements to sense changes in direction. “The current complex and severe international environment have added new uncertainties, the domestic economic recovery is not […]
By John Richardson THIS IS a tragedy in the genuine sense of the word, not just in the so-often misused sense of the word : a study earlier this year by the United Nations University said that as many as 580m additional people could be pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic, or about 8% […]
Note that all the data comparisons below are on a year-on-year basis By John Richardson THE PROVERBIAL light bulb came on early last month, thanks to this article from Trade Data Monitor (TDM) which analysed China’s strong July exports and made the point that they were driven by a big change in lifestyles. Many […]
y John Richardson NOBODY should be surprised by the BASF results for Q1 2019 where, on a year-on-year basis, EBIT was down by 71%. This was largely because of events in China. The roots of these very poor results, with many more likely to follow from other chemicals companies, can be traced back to H1 […]
