This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Baltic Dry Index Collapses 35% - Worst Start To Year In 30 Years
When this indicator of global trade rises, everything is rosy and reams of asset-gatherers and talking-heads wil quote it as indicative of how great the world is. When it drops - silence. There's always an excuse - over- or under-capacity, too many ships, too few ships, etc. However, the last 2 weeks have seen a 35% collapse in the cost to ship bulk. There is a relative seasonal pattern over the holiday period - with shipping costs rising into the holiday and falling after but... this is the biggest drop from a Christmas Eve since at least 1984, 30 years! Seems like the inventory stacking of Q4 had absolutely no follow-through whatsoever...
All thepost-Thanksgiving exuberance has been eviscerated from the Baltic Dry Index...
and some context - this is the worst post-holiday start to the year since at least 1984!!
Cramer?
Charts: Bloomberg
- 31272 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -




I prefer the HARPEX...but it shows basically the same trend. The economy is dead man walking and noone wants to admit it.
http://www.harperpetersen.com/harpex/harpexRH.do?timePeriod=Years10&&dat...
Screw the economy.....don't you know global warming might kill us?
Who cares everyone is losing their healthcare.....it's not like they have a job to pay for it anyway.
What's clear from the above chart is that 2013 was just a case of pulling forward demand. In other words: Buying time simply makes the problem worse ... much worse.
Not just great chart porn. Commodities, employment, and now this.
We are in for a bumpy ride.
dont wanna give y'all the blues, but i'm 'long john baldry'
Don't lay no boogie-woogie on the king of rock-n-roll. Bullilsh!
Now someone just might point out that stuffing the channels contributes to this..... naw. That would be too obvious with the MSM. Continue the propaganda!!!
If you like your economy, you can keep your economy.
"That's all, Folks!"
But but but... Promise Zones!
Are those places where you smoke some chronic and wait for Obama's promises to come true?
You look like a white male, no promise for you!
Oh there's a promise to the white males, all right-- a promise that Obama will fuck you over.
"Will", Buckaroo? It's a done-deal. The crackers just ain't got hip yet.
No decoupling of fundamentals and stock prices to see here. Move along.
Anyone know how to get the BDI on Yahoo or other stock sites? I wanted to compare it to the S&P. Thanks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND
Maybe if the CB's print real paper money, instead of digital fiat, then they could ship all the new paper around the globe and fix the BDI!!!
Helicopter Ben and BDI Yellen. Fav comment of the day. +1
"No worries, I got this"
-Janet
CTRL-P
Meanwhile, the Bernank is somewhere in South America sipping a margarita. But he isn't the Bernank anymore. He is Giuseppe Carbajal, wealthy industrialist.
I buy American made whenever possible. Whoops! Do you like my handy work in that chart?
Down Down and awayyyyyy..... Yellen man is here.
Bullish. Buy While it's still cheap, BitcheZ!
Arrrggghhhh mee buckoos.......down she goes........thay be shitwrecked..............that ther' waters be cursed i 'eard.
BDI downgraded from buoy to shell.
Party like it was 1984! Boo-ya!
The only inventory I stacked in Q4 was Ag, Au, and some serious rounds of PbCu projectiles, bitchez! And I'll keep on stackin' it until this whole fuckin' thing blows sky high Fukushima style.
and before I forget: FUK-U-SHIMA, LARRY YELLEN!!! Same to you Bernanke!!!
Skippity do da... Skippity ay.....my oh my, what the chart porn says!!
:) exactly.. putting it in perspective: at the same last year the baltic dry was trading at 750 and it was trading over 2,100 just a week ago.. so not such a big surprise to see it fall a little bit..
Percent change charts make good propaganda. but if you lose forty percent of a nickle, who cares? you always have to have the underlying number.
It's all because of the "polar vortex" everythings frozen-ha!
We're done! I mean the US not me!
Must be the weather, because the baltic sea is not frozen so it is cheaper for boats.
No one saw this coming.....
Couldn't this just mean we are buying less useless crap from china because ObamaCare is soaking up more/all discretionary spending??
I'm sure this all just anecdotal data and is completely meaningless. I feel quite sure that those in charge will be the first to tell us when when to run screaming into the woods (likely just in time for them to come take what meager belongings we might still have as payment on our collective debts).
BDI has been, and is, highly correlated to Bunker C and/or diesel fuel, which in turn, is correlated to crude oil prices. Add to this the world economy and shipping traffic, and the ship stock (old & inefficient, or new & efficient).
See http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$BDI:$WTIC&p=W&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&id=p27226548623
http://i.imgur.com/H2SJ1KK.png
We appear to have the simultaneous dropping price in crude, plus the BDI's reversion to long term average value. If there is a ship inventory or world trade effect, these are likely dwarfed by these two known and immediate factors.
You can't artificially inflate the numbers for the shipment of real goods like you can artificially inflate the stock market. Real goods are constrained by reality and real inputs. The stock market has no such constraints when real money does not reflect real goods and services.
Put the moves into a bigger context:
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND/chart
For the BDI, big up and down movments aren't necessarily uncommon.
But sharp, oh, mos def.