http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mos...t-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html 2009 ghost fleets.....interesting if you have not seen it before...
Yeap, saw that back in 2009 mate..... levels are pretty much worse than that.......what's "tapping" it to not be notice is a mystery....... nah... it's PRINTED MONEY..... and it will back fire every time...... QE4 is coming !
Wow, they could tie them all together and make some king of weird city right out of a William Gibson or Iain M Banks novel.
Reminds me of the awesome names the ships had in the Culture series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series#Novels
I am so sad that I will never read a new Culture novel. Luckily even re-reading the old ones always reveals things that I missed the previous time.
Baltic Dry Index drops to new all time low The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) fell to its lowest level ever on Wednesday dropping to 553 points. The index's previous all-time low was 554, which it hit on Monday this week and 6 August 1986. The BDI had rallied slightly on Tuesday moving up to 556 points before falling back 0.54% on Wednesday. The collapse in the dry bulk freight rates is being blamed on lower commodity prices, reduced demand and an oversupply of ships. http://www.seatrade-global.com/news/americas/baltic-dry-index-drops-to-new-all-time-low.html ======================================================== Baltic Dry at Lowest Level Since August 1986 (Bloomberg) -- Commodity shipping costs matched a record low set 28 years ago as China's slowing demand for coal and weaker bookings before the Asian country's New Year holidays compounded a fleet glut. The Baltic Dry Index slid 0.9 percent to 554 points, the same level it fell to in July and August of 1986, according to data on Monday from the Baltic Exchange in London. Day rates declined for most ship types monitored. China's seaborne coal imports slid 10 percent in 2014, reversing growth of 16 percent the year before, according to Clarkson Plc, the world's largest shipbroker. The Chinese economy, which buys almost half the world's coal and ore cargoes, will grow in 2015 at the slowest pace in 25 years, economists' forecasts compiled by Bloomberg show. "Demand is growing at a sluggish rate," Erik Folkeson, an Oslo-based analyst at Swedbank AB, said by phone, adding that demand is being further eroded before New Year holidays in China that start later this month. "Coal first of all, and the data that we've seen on Chinese iron ore imports has suggested a slowdown in January." Ship owners ordered three-times more dry bulk ships in 2013 than a year earlier in expectation of growing coal demand in China, according to Jeffrey Landsberg, managing director of Commodore Research, a New York-based adviser to ship owners. Those vessels are now being delivered to the market and competing for cargoes, driving rates down. "Chinese coal imports have fallen dramatically," he said by phone Monday. "They're not nearly as high as ship owners expected when those vessels were ordered." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...tches-record-low-as-coal-slump-heightens-glut
Bulk shipping rates drop to 30-year low as Baltic Dry Index plummets Shipping freight costs for bulk commodities are at 30-year lows, propping up lower mineral commodity prices and adding further premiums to wheat and other bulk cereal exports. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-13/bulk-commodity-shipping-costs-30-year-low/6091224 ASL Marine's profits plunge 78.4% ASL Marine's profits for the second quarter ended 31 December 2014 dived 78.4% year-on-year to SGD1.432 million (USD1.05 million). The Singapore-listed shipbuilder's plunge in profit was reflected in its revenue for 2Q15, which recorded a negative of SGD21 million due to a recognition of a revenue reversal of SGD95 million followed by the rescission of the two offshore supply vessel shipbuilding contracts in December 2014. The decline in earnings were attributed to a number of factors, including the slowdown of demand in shipbuilding orders following the sharp drops in bulk commodities and oil prices, and the significant competition in securing newbuilding orders. http://www.ihsmaritime360.com/article/16688/asl-marine-s-profits-plunge-78-4
This index halves and doubles and collapses and booms all the time. Just look at its chart over the years. It's simply due to what it is: a measurement of the demand for shipping a set of raw materials versus the amount/tonnes of vessels for them, there is a variety of elements that together draw it, so fluctuations can be due to any / combination of them, and, also important, the index is a leading indicator, it says something about the future, and what it is now, is an outcome of a past. For who does it matter: for those that put their money in those vessels. For others, well, it all just depends. Why does an index / price change: two sets of elements, classified under supply and demand. A new series ships production is a supply boomer and thus price collapser (as an example), for the future. The index is now low, meaning that supply of ships increased and/or(important) demand for shipping dropped. To actually judge any global economic outlook based on this, it requires figures of amounts / tonnes new ships. Figures of tonnes demand of these and those products. Those 'major alerters' here do not show or care. They blindly look at the index itself, claim a future based on the index itself, with complete ignorance of the underlying what's going on. For ex, a stable / unchanging amount ships / tonnes capacity, and a dropping baltic dry index would mean a bad economical outlook. But a stable / unchanging demand for shipping, and a droppng baltic dry index, would mean a good economical outlook, because shipping will be cheaper in the future, and thus positive for those that have to pay it. http://www.imsf.info/documents/IMSF2014/Developments in International Shipbuilding - Jenny.pdf Look at the actual shipbuilding completions. 2009-2010 shows a double top. Look at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/BDI.png The Baltic Dry Index shows a double top in 2008, to then collapse during the last months to a 198x bottom revisit. Using the same thinking, one could in 2008 have claimed Major NonAlert, everything rosy, flowers bees and sunshine. Yet, the crisis and the plunge back from the double rosy top occurred just some months later. Now some claim Major Alert (not surprised to see Zerohedge in the results), in the future, at a low BDI. So called bad economical outlook. Well lol, their timing is like a half decade too late. Maybe that's because they need others to think that something wouldn't be "in the market" yet?
I don't see any major significance behind this index. Its values have crashed in 2008-2009, if I'm not wrong... That was a huge bubble.
is that photo from West Coast in LA ? They are also experiencing union troubles and all sort of unbalance trade..... People just don't understand how important BDI is until it come undone again on the next recession that will be larger than the GFC in 2008 with no doubt.....
Yesterday, 21st January 2016, the Baltic Dry Index reached a new record low of 355 :| http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND