Helping you navigate the new normal
Every New Year starts with optimism about the global economy. But as Stanley Fischer, then vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, noted back in August 2014: “Year after year we have had to explain from mid-year on why the global growth rate has been lower than predicted as little as two quarters back.” Will […]
The post The global economy and the US$ – an alternative view appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.
Last year it was the near-doubling in US 10-year interest rates. In 2015, it was the oil price fall. This year, there is really only one candidate for ‘Chart of the Year’ – it has to be Bitcoin: It was trading at around $1000 at the start of 2017 and had reached $5000 by August […]
The post Chart of the Year: Bitcoin, the logical end for stimulus policies appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.
Trading oil markets used to be hard work. You had to talk to all the major players all the time (not just message them), and learn to judge whether they were telling the truth or inventing a version of it. You had to watch for breaking economic and political news. And you needed your own […]
Iran has been at the centre of all the major oil market price spikes in the past few decades: Today’s record prices on an annual basis are partly due to market fears over supply disruptions due to the Iran/Israel nuclear issue Fears over a nuclear showdown also led prices to jump to $150/bbl in July 2008, when the […]
The blog is busy preparing its presentations for its World Aromatics and Derivatives Conference later this month, co-organised as always with ICIS. As well as looking at the impact of the transition to the New Normal, it will be investigating the current state of benzene markets. These are always an excellent leading indicator for the global […]
Pity for a moment those poor souls whose income depends on finding ever-more creative ways of justifying today’s record levels of oil prices. One by one, all their favourite stories have disappeared. Even the traditional summer warnings of record hurricane disruption have so far failed to deliver. How different it is from the start of the crisis, when the […]
The blog suspects that the above chart may not feature prominently in the New Year reports about to be published by the main oil market brokers.
These will instead probably highlight the view that oil markets are very tight, and that prices should sur…
