Daily Chemical Reaction
All Together Now – US Monomer Values Fall WoW, Signaling Price Weakness Ahead Downstream
Key Points:
- US spot ethylene, polymer-grade propylene (PGP), and benzene values drop WoW, which will likely work to tug derivative values lower. Recent positive momentum in US commodity chemicals is now in reverse broadly.
- US commodity chemical producers are poised to post abnormally strong 2Q results. We foresee greater benefits for specialty producers in 2H21.
- We flag pertinent chemical sector corporate items (e.g., Indorama, Dow, Kuraray, Inter Pipeline, & Petrobras news; Several Capex & price updates)
- DOE Hydrogen initiatives advance and we flag more ESG sector items.
- We flag multiple macro-economic factors worthy of note, ranging from continued news of demand strength to the relatively weak US dollar YoY.
See PDF below for all charts, tables and diagrams