Find a rep Call now
menu

RON’S SEPTEMBER MARKET ANALYSIS

Alliance Plastics
Resin Market

The market was waiting to drop like a Space-X rocket but in an extraordinary show of strength, the resin manufacturers put out an increase, which we all looked at as another attempt to hold prices flat but then a gift to the Resin folks came from perhaps a celestial intervention. The majestic might of the heavens flooded the state that evidently everyone thought was a good idea to put all our chemical reactors below sea level. The biblical floodwaters engulfed Louisiana, and it made transportation look like a traffic jam in Beijing. So, as we wait for the state to dry out and the supply to come back online, we will be forced to take an increase. This increase feels to me like the resort fees I have to pay in Vegas. Also, as in the classic AS SEEN ON TV line, “wait, there’s more!”
Just as fast as I can eat a Snickers bar (1 bite is my record), the boys at Dow Chemical announced another increase for October. At least Football season has started and that helps numb the pain

Economic News

The anemic growth of the economy is puzzling as we continue to see strong job growth and a larger than expected decrease in manufacturing activity in the US. The Fed continues to warn about a rate increase, which is needed, but with this economic data is harder to imagine what is going to happen. I’m more confused than when my daughter tries to explain to me who Taylor Swift’s girl squad is. If you look at GDP growth, and take out the falling oil prices, we are paying less than half of what we paid for oil 2 years ago and when you enter this drastic decline in costs, gasoline and other petroleum products, the economy would have grown at a much faster rate than the 1.1 percent measurement. This still shows a consumer spending economy and we are using more gas than ever, which only means one thing. When oil prices go up, people will be lamenting the price of gasoline in their heavy duty SUVs.

Ron’s View

As we are growing out here at Alliance Plastics, I have to thank all of you and the fine colleagues in our company. August was our biggest month ever in our history. We’ve come a long way and we continue to face challenges every day. We are adding new colleagues and we are losing some as well. We are moving people to new roles and hiring as we are expanding to become a first class manufacturing company. Recently, my new Operations Manager went over some of the challenges with me and as we work as a team to bring solutions, we came to the realization that with our growth, comes the added challenge of managing the most important and crucial element of any company, the people. I find myself telling a parable or a story about what has to be done, maybe to allow people to understand how small our appointment in this life is and what decisions that someone else has made and their outcome. I pull from this to help teach me but also to teach my team. I told my Operations Manager, who struggled with the new organizational chart and the placement of personnel, about the story of Gettysburg and how thankfully, the South lost the war for good because of what I consider having the wrong person, at the wrong time and in the wrong job.

It was the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee decided that he was going to bring the war to the North and for the first time in the Civil War, a full scale invading army invaded the North to bring terror to the Union. Lee was trying to bring the North into a truce and to ruin the reelection efforts of Abraham Lincoln. If he could succeed and sustain his army in the North he would be able to perhaps force the political fight in Washington to bring an end to the war and to negotiate a peace, which would allow the union to be split apart. On the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, Lee in typical fashion was aggressively pushing the union troops back and as they retreated to the high ground, Lee sent a command to Gen. Richard Ewell “to carry the hill occupied by the enemy, if he found it practicable, but to avoid a general engagement until the arrival of the other divisions of the army”. Ewell was newly given the command of Stonewall Jackson’s Corp after Jackson was shot by his own troops in Lee’s and Jackson’s greatest victory, Chancellorsville. Now, if this command was given to Stonewall Jackson, it would easily been deciphered, it means press the advantage and take the heights while you have the superior manpower and momentum. The problem is that Ewell looked around at his men who were tired from the previous day’s battles and the forced marches. He found it impracticable to press on the fight. So, as the Southern troops rested, the Union troops were digging in to legendary names like Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill and receiving reinforcements. Lee was incensed that Ewell didn’t press and let him know when they met. Had Ewell taken the hill, Gettysburg almost certainly would have been another disaster for the Union, but one where it might have changed the entire outcome of the Civil War. The political outcome could have been a nation that was disillusioned with the war and an end to the union as the north might have negotiated a peace and Lincoln could have lost reelection. However, we all know the story, it is forever hallowed by the words of President Lincoln when he went to Gettysburg after the great Union victory to dedicate the new cemetery for the union dead. 50,000 souls would be offered up in this great battle and forever more, Lee would be on the defensive in what would be known thereafter as “The Lost Cause”. Why? All because Lee put the wrong person on the job.

Gettysburg Address:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.