Shares of Malaysian petrochemical producer Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd. have doubled this month as fears of a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure drive up global fertilizer prices, with analysts predicting more gains if the waterway remains shut. The stock is set to finish the month at the top of the MSCI Asia benchmark after a 102% climb since the war in Iran began. In comparison, the Asian gauge...
Shares of Malaysian petrochemical producer Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd. have doubled this month as fears of a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure drive up global fertilizer prices, with analysts predicting more gains if the waterway remains shut. The stock is set to finish the month at the top of the MSCI Asia benchmark after a 102% climb since the war in Iran began. In comparison, the Asian gauge has fallen more than 13%. At least seven brokerages have upgraded Petronas Chemicals this month, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. Read More: Global Funds Look to Malaysia as Iran War Shakes Up Asian Assets Competition for fertilizer is intensifying ahead of the sowing season, with the Middle East accounting for more than a third of urea exports and nearly a quarter of ammonia. That is set to lift earnings for the Malaysian company, as higher prices and margins persist if disruptions last through year-end. “Petronas Chemicals’ feedstock is stable, and will not be disrupted” as it’s obtained locally, said Kaushal Ladha , head of Thailand research for Macquarie Capital. “Most people had not been positioning for this stock so any good news can move it in a very significant way.” Malaysian stocks have stood out this month as the war in Iran upended markets globally, helped by its status as one of Asia’s few net energy exporters. Foreign investors have net bought $25.3 million of local shares in March even as they sold equities in most other emerging Asian markets. CGS International Securities raised Petronas Chemicals’ price target by 19% to 6.58 ringgit ($1.63) after boosting its 2026 core net profit estimate by 44%. A longer-than-expected closure of the strait “may cause severe feedstock shortages for Petronas Chemicals’ naphtha-based competitors and create conditions for a parabolic increase in selling prices,” CGS International analyst Raymond Yap wrote in a note.
In Hungary, the Iran war is exposing tensions. Voters may decide on 12 April that the prime minister’s geopolitical contortions are a liability On 3 March, Viktor Orbán held a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin. According to official Hungarian reporting, the discussion focused on “energy issues” and other routine matters. What followed was anything but routine. Within days, the Hungarian forei...
In Hungary, the Iran war is exposing tensions. Voters may decide on 12 April that the prime minister’s geopolitical contortions are a liability On 3 March, Viktor Orbán held a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin. According to official Hungarian reporting, the discussion focused on “energy issues” and other routine matters. What followed was anything but routine. Within days, the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó , had flown to Moscow, and returned with two freed prisoners of war , dual citizens of Ukraine and Hungary. Hungary is not part of the military conflict in Ukraine, but the message was unmistakable. With his PoW diplomacy, Putin was not only signalling goodwill towards Hungary, he was effectively endorsing Orbán’s re-election on 12 April. Péter Krekó is a political scientist, behavioural scientist, economist and director of the independent thinktank the Political Capital Institute in Budapest Continue reading...
Madeleine Sumption says politicians make big claims about things they only partially control to appeal to voters Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” profiting from small boat crossings has followed a pattern set by Conservative-led governments of employing “bullish rhetoric” with little evidence that it can be delivered, an expert has claimed. Madeleine Sumption, the director of the Univers...
Madeleine Sumption says politicians make big claims about things they only partially control to appeal to voters Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” profiting from small boat crossings has followed a pattern set by Conservative-led governments of employing “bullish rhetoric” with little evidence that it can be delivered, an expert has claimed. Madeleine Sumption, the director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, says the prime minister has repeated the mistakes of Rishi Sunak and David Cameron by making “bold claims with great certainty about things governments only partially control” . Continue reading...
If all goes to plan, Artemis II, Nasa’s mission to return humans to the moon, will launch this week. The mission will mark the farthest that humans have travelled from Earth, and the first return to the moon in more than 50 years. It will also pave the way for landing on the moon again as soon as 2028. But given the Apollo missions have already achieved that feat, does going back to the moon still...
If all goes to plan, Artemis II, Nasa’s mission to return humans to the moon, will launch this week. The mission will mark the farthest that humans have travelled from Earth, and the first return to the moon in more than 50 years. It will also pave the way for landing on the moon again as soon as 2028. But given the Apollo missions have already achieved that feat, does going back to the moon still matter today? To find out, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, the Atlantic journalist Ross Andersen, and Jan Wörner, a former director general of the European Space Agency Clips: ABC, Nasa Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...
It costs the UK economy £700m a year, and criminal gangs are operating with near impunity. Every time a lorry gets robbed, raided or hijacked, it’s Mike Dawber who investigates In August 2021, Mike Dawber, the UK’s leading detective in cargo crime, got a call from officers in Bradford CID. They were planning to search two warehouses that contained, in their words, an awful lot of suspicious goods....
It costs the UK economy £700m a year, and criminal gangs are operating with near impunity. Every time a lorry gets robbed, raided or hijacked, it’s Mike Dawber who investigates In August 2021, Mike Dawber, the UK’s leading detective in cargo crime, got a call from officers in Bradford CID. They were planning to search two warehouses that contained, in their words, an awful lot of suspicious goods. This was a job that required Dawber’s expert eye. He drove an hour from his home, in the unmarked police car that doubles as his office, and arrived to discover the description barely did it justice. As soon as he walked in to the first warehouse, he noticed 17 pallets of golfing equipment. They had, he knew, been stolen three weeks before from a truck at Lymm motorway services, just outside Manchester. He reckoned they were worth about £1m. As Dawber continued his survey, he came across 18 pallets of Asics trainers, stolen three years before, at Warwick services. Then 14 pallets of lawnmowers: five years before, from a truck on the A1 at Colsterworth. He came across IT equipment, sportswear, high-end fashion, electrical goods, toasters, microwaves, beauty products. One pallet was simply labelled “Eyelash technology”. Dawber didn’t know what eyelash technology was, exactly, but he later learned that a pallet of it was worth more than £500,000. Continue reading...
He went from a Glasgow council estate to Hollywood fame. Now, in his directorial debut, the X-Men star is challenging stereotypes about his homeland via the remarkable tale of a real-life hip-hop hoax It’s the final night of the Glasgow film festival and James McAvoy is a wee bit out of breath. His directorial debut, California Schemin’ , is playing across all three screens at the Glasgow Film The...
He went from a Glasgow council estate to Hollywood fame. Now, in his directorial debut, the X-Men star is challenging stereotypes about his homeland via the remarkable tale of a real-life hip-hop hoax It’s the final night of the Glasgow film festival and James McAvoy is a wee bit out of breath. His directorial debut, California Schemin’ , is playing across all three screens at the Glasgow Film Theatre in the city centre, taking the festival’s prestige closing slot. Usually, a big name would say a few words of introduction in the main cinema then bask in the glory. Not McAvoy. Getting in among it still comes naturally 25 years after he left this city to pursue a career that has blazed from his award-winning Cyrano de Bergerac in the West End of London to playing Professor X, the founder of the X-Men, in the blockbuster Hollywood franchise. Continue reading...
Nationwide reforms aim to standardise collections and expand food waste recycling to tackle stagnating rates Recycling rules across England have long been inconsistent – but that will change from Tuesday when the government’s Simpler Recycling legislation comes into effect. Continue reading...
Nationwide reforms aim to standardise collections and expand food waste recycling to tackle stagnating rates Recycling rules across England have long been inconsistent – but that will change from Tuesday when the government’s Simpler Recycling legislation comes into effect. Continue reading...
Kenya has revived construction on its multibillion-dollar Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) extension that stalled more than six years ago, replacing heavy sovereign debt with innovative financing after renegotiating its loans with China. According to Kenyan officials, the Chinese firm China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and its subsidiary, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), will bu...
Kenya has revived construction on its multibillion-dollar Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) extension that stalled more than six years ago, replacing heavy sovereign debt with innovative financing after renegotiating its loans with China. According to Kenyan officials, the Chinese firm China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and its subsidiary, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), will build the railway’s two remaining sections at an estimated cost of US$5.4 billion. Kenyan President...
In 2022, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed that less than 10 per cent of global plastic waste was recycled. Other research, published in Nature, showed that of the 400 million tonnes (440 million US tons) of plastic produced that year, fewer than 38 million came from recycled sources. In China, where about one-third of the world’s plastic is produced, th...
In 2022, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed that less than 10 per cent of global plastic waste was recycled. Other research, published in Nature, showed that of the 400 million tonnes (440 million US tons) of plastic produced that year, fewer than 38 million came from recycled sources. In China, where about one-third of the world’s plastic is produced, the materials science company Dow is testing its new Track and Trace Platform in collaboration with...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Bond yields tumble as markets decide growth worries them more than inflation. Trump said negotiations were going well, and threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s utilities. Iran retaliated by striking a Kuwaiti tanker at dock in Dubai. WTI crude topped $100 , snuffing out an equity rally. It’s official; the...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Bond yields tumble as markets decide growth worries them more than inflation. Trump said negotiations were going well, and threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s utilities. Iran retaliated by striking a Kuwaiti tanker at dock in Dubai. WTI crude topped $100 , snuffing out an equity rally. It’s official; the US is OK with 401(k) plans holding private assets . AND: Some great buzzer-beaters. Bonds’ Silver Lining Assumptions were made to be broken. An oil price spike automatically raises prices, so it’s bad for inflation. That generally causes bond yields to rise, as the assumption is that central banks will have to raise rates to combat the higher prices. But it also acts like a tax hike, forcing consumers and companies to spend less on things other than oil. All else equal, that justifies a rate cut, and lower yields. Further, the logic of bonds is that they act as a shelter in times of stress — which means investors buy them during extreme uncertainty and conflict, like the past month. Thus it’s always been strange that the bond market unambiguously reacted to the Iran war’s inflation risk, but not to the threat to growth, and sent yields higher. Until now. Both yields and rate expectations for the Federal Reserve suddenly dipped Monday: It’s not obvious why this happened when it did. Traders entered the crisis with leveraged positions, meaning that some of the rise in yields since then has come through a classic trading squeeze. Also, comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell in the US morning helped further dispel the notion that rate hikes were a certainty. The immediate effect was to spark a sudden recovery in equities despite another dispiriting weekend of news from the Gulf. To quote one macro strategist: Interesting. Equities trading much better because Fixed Income is trading much better. Fixed Income is trading much better because we suddenly chose to fear growth more than...
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AMD Ryzen AI MAX 400 "Gorgon Halo" Leaked: The MAX 495 with a 5.2 GHz clock speed and a 3.0 GHz iGPU suggests a very minor but clearly calculated refresh igor´sLAB
AMD Ryzen AI MAX 400 "Gorgon Halo" Leaked: The MAX 495 with a 5.2 GHz clock speed and a 3.0 GHz iGPU suggests a very minor but clearly calculated refresh igor´sLAB
AMD Ryzen AI MAX 400 "Gorgon Halo" Leaked: The MAX 495 with a 5.2 GHz clock speed and a 3.0 GHz iGPU suggests a very minor but clearly calculated refresh igorslab.de
AMD Ryzen AI MAX 400 "Gorgon Halo" Leaked: The MAX 495 with a 5.2 GHz clock speed and a 3.0 GHz iGPU suggests a very minor but clearly calculated refresh igorslab.de
MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images So, I've been covering Old Republic ( ORI ) for quite some time now. My last article was in January 2026, which might raise the question of why it's time for an update now, about 2.5 months after the fact. The company has, after all, followed my thesis and rating quite accurately, underperformed and dropped - but it's very hard to argue that it's clo...
MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images So, I've been covering Old Republic ( ORI ) for quite some time now. My last article was in January 2026, which might raise the question of why it's time for an update now, about 2.5 months after the fact. The company has, after all, followed my thesis and rating quite accurately, underperformed and dropped - but it's very hard to argue that it's closing in on my PT, which at the time of my last article was barely $30/share. Furthermore, the Quant ratings currently given by SA do not exactly look promising - valuation and momentum at a C, which is the best, while profit and revisions, as well as growth, are earning very poor marks. What fascinates me the most is perhaps the dichotomy between the targets given by me (and other SA analysts following ORI, of course), as well as Wall Street and Quant. Seeking Alpha ORI grades One could argue that it's proof that analysts can't agree on anything. I would argue it's proof that analysts can view companies in very different ways - and it's this which I will be focusing on here. You can find my last article here. So in this piece, I will be showing you how exactly someone may reach so different targets in looking at a company. However, in true valuation spirit, I will also make it clear why I cannot agree with the Wall Street view on this business. It's not that I claim they are 100% wrong - it's that I view their thesis as having a comparatively low likelihood of materializing, if that makes sense. So, dear readers, financials and insurance is a bit of my favorite when it comes to analysis. So, looking at ORI is "my wheelhouse". I feel I have a good grip on parts of the sector, not only covering the US but also the EU and the international sector, a fairly broad coverage, with several undervaluation successes under "my belt", so to speak. Let's look at what we have here. Old Republic - Upside and Potential in an Industry That's Struggling In my previous article, I described OR...