PTA: Still Facing Downward Pressure

The sharp rebound in international crude oil since the end of January changed the trend of unilateral downward trend.

The speed and intensity of market pformation are often beyond the expectation of most people. Especially in the absence of major changes in fundamentals, such a trend change comes mainly from changes in market expectations.

According to the monitoring data of the largest four energy ETF funds in the United States, since last November, a large number of off site funds began to intervene in the energy market. After more than half a year's unilateral fall, long term funds discovered the investment value of the crude oil market, and then intervened without interruption.

In addition, the weekly drilling platform data released by US oil service companies also triggered investors' anticipation of the decline of US crude oil production in the future.

However, the reality is that the US crude oil output has not decreased and the US crude oil inventories have been constantly refreshing. This indicates that supply is still in excess of demand.

Therefore, after this round of recovery market, the weak fundamentals will push oil prices back to the downtrend, and then form a new round of impact on domestic chemical industry.

In 1 and February this year, the import volume of domestic PX remained high, and the enthusiasm of PTA production enterprises was higher, basically above 70%, even downstream.

During the Spring Festival, the operating rate of PTA enterprises remained at around 75%.

In addition, during the Chinese New Year holiday, Hengli Petrochemical's 2 million 200 thousand tons of new installations were officially put into operation, making the total PTA capacity of the domestic market reaching 45 million 680 thousand tons, exceeding the total capacity of the polyester, and the pressure of oversupply was further apparent.

According to CCF estimates, the whole country in February

Social stocks increased by more than 300 thousand tons, and supply pressure will be concentrated in March.

Therefore, from the perspective of supply and inventory, the spot price of PTA will be obviously under pressure.

Due to the prior period

A large number of industrial funds are actively involved in the risk free arbitrage operation of buying and selling futures, resulting in continuous accumulation of exchange warehouse receipts. As long as the price difference structure is always there, the probability that the 1505 contract will reach a record high will be very large.

Therefore, the huge volume of warehouse receipts is not only a pressure on spot prices, but also a deterrent to the 1505 contract price.

From the cash flow calculation of PX and PTA at the current stage, both of them have suffered a continuous loss, especially the loss tolerance of upstream PX is relatively limited. If the continuous loss or loss margin further expands, the PX enterprises will not be excluded from overhauling efforts, which will cause PX prices to continue to rise, thus promoting the expansion of the PTA enterprises' losses and focusing on overhaul.

In addition, the current inventory is mainly concentrated in the hands of PTA production enterprises. If the demand for polyester can start on schedule after the holiday, the pfer of inventory will be conducive to the promotion of PTA enterprises' discourse power.

Therefore, from the perspective of cash flow and inventory pfer, the price of PTA will rise in the future.

Based on the above analysis, under the pressure of increasing crude oil space, increasing inventory pressure and the pressure of huge warehouse receipts, the post PTA price will face a high possibility of falling.

However, considering that the current PX and PTA production enterprises are all in a negative cash flow, once the stock pressure in the future increases again, then the rally caused by centralized maintenance will be reproduced.

Therefore, in terms of specific operation, it is suggested that investors take a strategy of short selling, and pay close attention to the changes in the operation and demand of the plant.