From extasis to agony, our history oscillates. We can be the best, we can be the worst, with the same ease, but Argentinians, thank God La Argentinidad al Palo by Bersuit Vergarabat Alea iacta est! Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant!

Why do oil companies keep investing into a gluted olefins market? Why all investment goes to China? The answers are related Out and free to read! $DOW $LYB $XOM $0386.HK $0857.HK

Very surprising results from Argentina. Landslide in favor of Milei. Positive for markets obviously in the short term, but key question forward is if there will be any FX reform. Without that the country can be in the same spot in a few months or next year.

Milei's victory is being spun as validation of the Dollar peg. Unfortunate! The past 2 months were a serious crisis with large capital flight, a symptom of Peso overvaluation. All of this is unnecessary and harmful to Argentina. Just let the Peso float... robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/the-argentin…

A lot of rumors these days around the Arg government having 'learned the lesson' and now potentially allowing or preparing a market-determined FX rate, which would very probably include a depreciation of the currency. I take St. Thomas' stance here: Non vedo, non credo. However,

One hard-to-understand thing in apparel/footwear is how some styles or brands are 'touched by the magic wand' without any work, while others dont. One example of very innovative work with bad results is Vans ($VFC). There's no brand I know that is THIS varied.

Investing areas mix. $BLX generally runs a short-term, low risk book, but has added a Stage 2 loan this quarter. Where is it coming from? Petrochem I mean the definition of Stage 2 is clients, again, that are current, but the conditions have deteriorated. And that's exactly

Need is the mother of invention. In this case $COLM's new designs in Sorel, and also their new video campaign (Engineered for Whatever). Don't know if it works, but it's different, and that's a good thing

China's gasoline consumption down 9% YoY in the Golden Week. Where do you send that excess refinery/oil capacity? To chemicals My piece analyzing this trend is still free to read until next saturday

$LYB 3Q25 confirms two key assumptions from Olefins Intro. 1st, the minimal technical operating capacity is super high in olefins, 70/75%. You either choose 70/75% or 0%, leading to oversupply. 2nd, integration costs go much more than just logistics, including gas and steam

Similar for $DOW, the confirmation I got was around ethane export controls to China, and about worries (from GS analyst) that higher nat gas exports will impact the competitiveness of US exports in petchem

Argentina's President Javier Milei appears to be doubling down on an exchange rate based stabilization program -- an incredibly risky move for a country that blew through $14 billion from the IMF earlier this year to support an overvalued peso. 1/

$HUN 2Q25 also confirms some aspects about chems "Chemical facilities, by and large, are very expensive to shut down. In Europe, it's very problematic when you have to deal with government authorities and so forth. And particularly in sites where you've got 4 or 5 other chemical

Chile Presidential elections next weekend. The left is almost guaranteed to lose. Key question for the elections is: how moderate/extremist will the new government be? Will the left vote for Matthei to stop Kast/Kaiser? $ECH is up ~40% since I wrote a country primer (including

Both $DOW and $LYB in recent calls have said they expect 7/8Mt of new capacity shutdowns to be announced from recent China anti-involution campaigns. The problem? China is expected to add 17/20Mt between today and 2030

Quipus Capital Loved it. It clarified that this may be a longer down-cycle than I had been pricing in. I definitely underweighted that risk. The way you laid out the “reduce fuels / raise chemicals” logic and tied strategy to capacity build-out made the structural picture very clear.

A lot of people are bullish $DOW and $LYB on a potential olefins/polyolefins recovery. In Olefins III, I go over the strategic position of the companies, key markets, cost position, capital allocation, cash runway, and potential scenarios. As always, free to read

The first step in understanding $DOW and $LYB strategic position is to know where they get their money from. In both cases, it is basically North American olefins and polyolefins, with additional contributions from PO/oxyfuels ($LYB) and polyurethanes ($DOW).

Probably the worst competitive scenario for $LYB $DOW and other NA petrochems is oil going down while natgas goes up in the US. Ethane can be used as natgas, and therefore an increase in the latter reduces the competitiveness of NA chems, while oil down reduces the cost of

Both $DOW and $LYB are basically American exporters. Most of their assets are in the US, but at least half of their revenues are outside. This makes a lot of sense because of American competitiveness. It is both a blessing and the largest risk source, coming from protectionism