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Chemicals and the Economy

India’s auto sales enter the New Normal

India is the 3rd largest Asian auto market after China and Japan, and a year ago its automobile association was confidently forecasting annual demand growth of 10%-12%. Instead, sales have fallen 7% (India uses an April-March year) – the first time annual sales have fallen for a decade. As Reuters notes: “Carmakers in India, two […]

Licence plate trading drives Q1 jump in China’s auto sales

Something very strange happened in China’s auto market during Q1. As the chart shows, sales (red square) rocketed 20% in January/February versus 2012 (green line), before cooling to 15% growth in March. Neither government nor the auto industry expects this pace to continue: • Government forecasts are for 8% overall growth this year • Industry […]

US auto sales growth slows as Hurricane Sandy impact ends

250,500 US autos were destroyed during Hurricane Sandy last November, according to official data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Their replacement was clearly going to have a big impact on auto sales for the following months. Yet strangely, the blog has seen no discussion of this impact. So it has made its own calculations […]

Aging US BabyBoomers mean new home boom unlikely

Is a recovery underway in the US housing market? Investors on Wall Street certainly think so. One over-excited fund manager called the blog recently to exclaim “housing starts were at 500k, now they are at 900k, and they’ll be back to 2 million within a year or two”. His definition of a pessimist was someone […]

Auto sales start to plateau globally

Autos are the largest manufacturing business in the world, and are also the largest single source of demand for chemicals and plastics. So developments in the major markets are key to future economic growth and demand patterns. The chart summarises developments since 2008 in the 7 major markets, which account for 85% of global volume, […]

EU auto sales continue their decline

There really isn’t very much to say about the latest EU auto sales data. They were simply awful. As the chart shows, 2013 volumes (red square) are well below 2012 levels (green line). Less than 800k cars were sold in the 2 months combined, down 10%. Some major markets have now been falling for a […]

Demand weakness spreads across Europe and Asia

The blog was in sober mood when giving its usual New Year Outlook in January, warning that “renewed global recession appears to be the major risk facing us at the start of 2013“. Developments since then only reinforce its caution. Europe and Asia are now seeing widespread weakness in demand: • In Europe, the chairman […]

Demand collapses as stock markets hit new records

Financial markets long ago lost all touch with reality. Not only have central banks provided $tns of cheap liquidity with the specific aim of pushing stock markets higher. But they have also allowed computers to dominate trading, so no single market now knows what it is pricing. Chemical markets, and those who operate in them, […]

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