When Canadians Were Mourning Market Manipulators Were Thinking of Higher Profits

On Sun. Jan. 12, 2020, the new base prices for polymer and chemicals was announced for a week. This was after a week of sadness in Iran due to last week’s General Soleimani’s keeling by a US missile and then an unintentionally attack of an Iranian defense system to an Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 airline killing 176 passengers + 9 crew members.

According to PIMI reporter, Iran’s Petrochemical Downstream Industry Development(PDID) Office of NPC, which is responsible for definition and announcement of the petrochemical prices which should be traded via the stock exchange, issued new polymer and chemical prices in accordance with its routine.
This week, the formula for the discovery of basic prices of polymer and chemicals was calculated based on two factors, the global price changes of polymers and the average US$ value in the NIMA official system. However, the 2nd factor’s calculation method changed to a new formula, i.e., addition of both averages for purchasing and selling the US$ divided by 2.
In this regard the US$ base rate was set at 117.685 Rials, which is up 675 Rials in comparison with the previous week.
The increasing of Rls. 645 means about 0.58% higher than last week. Since the global prices of polymers also recorded an upward trend in the first week of 2020, so, both factors were increasing, which means the upward trend in the price of petrochemicals in the domestic market. This increasing trend has been going on for a month and a half. While in the past few weeks, the dollar has been the biggest lever of price increases, this week, as the increasing price of the dollar was negligible, so the global prices played greater role in raising prices.

A survey on the last week’s trading volumes at the petrochemical hall of IME shows that two catastrophic incidents in Iran (attacks of the Iranian army on the US army sites in Iraq and a tragedy that happened through an unintentionally shooting down of an Ukrainian passenger airline killing 176 + 9 crew members) has not affected the plastics trading and converting markets.

Two weeks ago (Dec. 28th – Jan. 2nd) the amount of supply, demand and trade volume were 88.696, 110.327 and 76.661 tons respectively. However, while the whole country was involved in funeral of the General Soleimani, then the attack of Iranian missiles to the US army bases in Iraq and finally an unintentional Iranian missile firing to an Ukrainian airline killing a high number of Iranian and Iranian-Canadian passengers aboard (Click Here) and mostly the Canadians were mourning for their compatriots, the market manipulators which never forget their benefits, were thinking of higher profits. This resulted in registering higher figures for supply and demand, though the volume of trading decreased for the last week (Jan. 4-9). The figures for supply, demands and trading volume were 98,80, 111,179 and 72,808 tons respectively.

Also the market welcomed purchasing of different grades of PE more than other materials. Table I below shows the 3 highest at once purchases of polymers in one bid. Table II shows the new prices which are valid till Sun. Jan. 19th., 2020, and the last table shows trading figures for polymers between Sun. 5th to Sat. 11th of Jan. 2020.

Table 1: Highest purchases in one bid at the IME hall

Table II: Comparison table of the base prices of polymers during last and previous (Click Here) week, arranged according to the highest to lowest percentage changes in prices.