A permanent separation? Source of picture: edu.com By John Richardson IT IS pretty easy to predict specific events that will cause declines in polyolefins pricing in China next year thanks to the big role that macro-economics now plays in setting the market. No longer do you need to mainly sweat over increasingly difficult polyethylene […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Asian Inflation And Vietnam Polyolefins
Guess who’s coming to Christmas dinner Source of picture: biology.ucf.edu By John Richardson THE widespread problem of surging inflation in Asia ex-Japan is a major threat to petrochemicals demand growth in 2011. Governments need to put the brakes on to prevent economies from overheating. But the problem is that raising interest rates could […]
OPEC, China Inflation And Petchems
By John Richardson OPEC’s decision to maintain crude quotas at current levels could give the banks further ammunition to manipulate opinion that the black stuff is genuinely in tight supply. There is plenty of evidence that oil is, in fact, still pretty long – and that this bull-run is yet again about speculators talking up […]
December Polyolefin Price Rises Flounder
“I am so happy to be supporting polyethylene film pricing”…. Source of picture: Canada-China Agriculture and Food Development Exchange By John Richardson IT looks as if attempts by polyolefin producers to raise prices for December deliveries have, as we predicted last week, been largely unsuccessful. Some grades of polypropylene (PP) edged up by $10-20/tonne […]
December Polyolefin Price-Rise Bid Will Fail
By John Richardson and Malini Hariharan in Shanghai A TWO-TIER China polyolefin market had developed in China over the last couple of years – but the $64,000 question right now is: At which of these two levels will most business be settled during December? The ever-volatile Dalian Commodity Exchange determines the day-by-day sentiment, while overseas […]
Chemicals And Polymer Prices Behave As We Predicted
By John Richardson AS the blog had anticipated would happen, there were sharp retreats in some chemicals and polymers pricing late last week on the steep declines in equity and crude prices. Polyethylene (PE) fell by $70-130/tonne, according to our colleagues at ICIS pricing, as the Dalian Commodity Exchange once again demonstrated that it has become […]
Petchem Pricing Faces Big Declines
By John Richardson THE wheels have started to come off the wagon – as we have been warning about over the past week or so – as a result of a broad sell-off in equities and commodities. Inflation concerns in China and elsewhere, the result of all the hot money flowing into emerging markets due to QE2, […]
Beware The Motives of Optimists
By John Richardson IT is always useful to make a note of both what economists are saying and where they are coming from. To give you an example, I was at a conference last year when I heard a ridiculously rosy outlook for both emerging and developed economies, delivered by an economist working for a […]
China Latest Growth, Inflation Raise Rate Rise Fears
By John Richardson CHINA’S soaring fourth-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) growth – and the release of the latest inflation statistic – has heightened fears among economists that interest-rate rises will be necessary, risking collapse in house prices if it’s not managed skilfully. Inflation rose to 1.9% in December last year from 0.6% in November, according to […]
China Govt’s Next Moves Critical For World Economy
By John Richardson CHINA’S decision yesterday to increase the amount banks must set aside as reserves and two interbank interest rate rises in the space of a week are designed to tighten monetary conditions as worries grow over overheating and inflation. Lending reached Yuan 600bn ($88bn) in the first week of this year, not far […]
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