Baltic Dry Index.

[Neubarth]

Not as key an index as it was a year ago, but it still shows the truth about the economy.

BDIY: BALTIC DRY INDEX Summary - Bloomberg

 

[xotoxi]

What does this have to do with Jesus destroying non-believers?

 

[william the wie]

Not as key an index as it was a year ago, but it still shows the truth about the economy.

BDIY: BALTIC DRY INDEX Summary - Bloomberg

Seriously 0.4% drop listed when I could see a 37.5% drop from recent highs certainly left me confused. being a 10% drop away from a new low I think more OP explanation is definitely needed for those who are more graphically or numerically oriented. That link needed some exposition.

 

[Neubarth]

Not as key an index as it was a year ago, but it still shows the truth about the economy.

BDIY: BALTIC DRY INDEX Summary - Bloomberg

Seriously 0.4% drop listed when I could see a 37.5% drop from recent highs certainly left me confused. being a 10% drop away from a new low I think more OP explanation is definitely needed for those who are more graphically or numerically oriented. That link needed some exposition.

You are so right. What I linked to was the three year chart, but what came up when the link is clicked is the six month chart. I guess the default for that site is the six month. If people are the least bit curious, they will pull up a longer chart period. If they aren't, they won't bother.

This much I know, with all of the new ships being built in Asia, the fall off in rates reflects a new glut of ships. If the number of the ships remained the same, and prices dropped than we know for certain that the demand for shipping would be falling (i.e. worsening Depression - something that I have maintained is happening all along.)

What new ships are being built you ask. Well, China put in orders for over a hundred from their own shipyards to put people back to work. Their job creation has been practical. Unfortunately right now those new ships are not being used.

 

[william the wie]

Did the ghost fleet off the Singapore make the rounds on this board? I know a huge amount of tonnage contracts existed before the slow down and ships that were on order prior to the meltdown are selling cheap and will be selling cheap for the rest of the year.

 

[Neubarth]

Did the ghost fleet off the Singapore make the rounds on this board? I know a huge amount of tonnage contracts existed before the slow down and ships that were on order prior to the meltdown are selling cheap and will be selling cheap for the rest of the year.

I think there were three different strings that mentioned the ships in storage in several places around the world. Hundreds of ships have been put to rest by the big shipping companies. China has built ships to replace ships that never should have been replaced. Now, they have nearly twice as many ships siting idle. This is a crazy messed up world.

 

[william the wie]

From what I understand the Singapore ghost fleet is the big one. There are no doubt others near the two big southern capes but maintenance costs due to weather make them less desirable with the straits of Magellan being a big step down from Cape Hope. But as the economy slows down other anchorages will pop up.

 

[Neubarth]

From what I understand the Singapore ghost fleet is the big one. There are no doubt others near the two big southern capes but maintenance costs due to weather make them less desirable with the straits of Magellan being a big step down from Cape Hope. But as the economy slows down other anchorages will pop up.

Singapore does, indeed, have the biggest concentration in one place. There are an estimated 900 to 1000 ships outside African ports, anchored with maintenance crews of three or four men assigned to each boat. There are an estimated 400 to 500 outside South American ports with over two hundred in the Montevideo - Buenos Aires area.

Regardless the World economy has improved in the past year. The United States has seen improvement in manufacturing, but that has not been enough to actually stop the decline in jobs in this country. We are still shedding jobs. The Government is dropping the unemployed from the work force to try to make it look like things are improving. Eventually the ruse will fail.

And then What?????

 

[Neubarth]

What does this have to do with Jesus destroying non-believers?

Well, actually we prefer to refer to them as ANTIGODIANS. The anti-God-ians are opposed to anything that God says is good for man. Most of all they are anti-GOD.

The ironic thing is that in Revelation the Bible predicts economic chaos just before the mass killings start that will wipe out most if not all of Earth's population. For those people who believe the accurate Bible prophecies, the economic collapse of the world is the next straw on the camel's back.

 

[Big Fitz]

Did the ghost fleet off the Singapore make the rounds on this board? I know a huge amount of tonnage contracts existed before the slow down and ships that were on order prior to the meltdown are selling cheap and will be selling cheap for the rest of the year.

Yep. It did last fall. Pretty eerie.

 

[editec]

FYI for those of us (like myself) who might be unfamiliar with this index:

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is a number issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange. Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the Index tracks worldwide international shipping prices of various dry bulk cargoes.
The index provides "an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 26 shipping routes measured on a timecharter and voyage basis, the index covers Handymax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain."[1]

Don't know doodle squat about shipping, but the 5 year seems to be trending in the same range as 2006-2007.

By eyeballing it, it appears to me that the range of standard deviations from norm is much higher than the 2006-07 era, however.

Nue, since you are obviously somebody who knows much more about this index than I, I'd appreciate your thoughts on how 2008 through 2010 differ from previous periods.

Is shipping, for example, typically subject to such wide fluxuations?

If anything (based merely on the 5 year chart) it appears that shipping has returned from a brief period that was unusually high, rather than this period indicating a dramatic shift from the norm.

But like I say, I have no historical perspective to really understand what this chart is indicating.

I'm hoping you do.

 

[Neubarth]

FYI for those of us (like myself) who might be unfamiliar with this index:

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is a number issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange. Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the Index tracks worldwide international shipping prices of various dry bulk cargoes.
The index provides "an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 26 shipping routes measured on a timecharter and voyage basis, the index covers Handymax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain."[1]

Don't know doodle squat about shipping, but the 5 year seems to be trending in the same range as 2006-2007.

By eyeballing it, it appears to me that the range of standard deviations from norm is much higher than the 2006-07 era, however.

Nue, since you are obviously somebody who knows much more about this index than I, I'd appreciate your thoughts on how 2008 through 2010 differ from previous periods.

Is shipping, for example, typically subject to such wide fluxuations?

If anything (based merely on the 5 year chart) it appears that shipping has returned from a brief period that was unusually high, rather than this period indicating a dramatic shift from the norm.

But like I say, I have no historical perspective to really understand what this chart is indicating.

I'm hoping you do.

I used to look at shipping as an almost exponential factor indicator of what is happening to the world economy. Dramatic swings down are signs of trouble. Strong swings up are indication of rapidly improving global economies. If the number of ships in play remain about the same the index can tell you What is really happening.

In this day and age of government lying about almost anything that it wants to, having an index like the Baltic Dry Index is a good way of judging what is really happening. For a year before the current economic collapse the world economy was rocking and rolling as witnessed by the rise in shipping costs. If companies were willing to pay those inflated costs at the end of an economic upswing, it shows that profits were being made in manufacturing and natural resource shipments. The world economy had to be rolling to pay those prices.

Then you see the tremendous falloff in shipping prices. Prices fell so low that shipping was not generating profit and ships were being put to anchor in storage areas. Thousands of ships both big and small were laid up in storage areas all around the world. About the time this was beginning to look catastrophic Red China placed major orders for iron ore and other raw products.

State controlled economies can take advantage of low shipping prices and low commodity prices in a recession. China made out like a bandit. You can see that shipping prices started to go up again. They fell after that once most of the orders were filled and no new orders were in the pipeline. After several more months, China again placed orders for raw goods and large shipments of grain, so we had a second spike in shipping costs, and now that is winding down. China has limited protected storage areas for more shipments, so I expect that we will not see a resumption in shipping costs in the near future. We are way down and do not know how to get up. This does not bode well for further world economic growth. In fact, we might have a global economic contraction taking shape. That will be accelerated by any austerity moves by Europe. Somebody other than China has got to start placing orders for commodities and raw goods.

 

[william the wie]

Recent changes in the Australian housing and mining markets look like China is cutting way back so I would expect the current downturn to worsen.

 

[uscitizen]

What does this have to do with Jesus destroying non-believers?

I think it is some standard used in determining who is a slut.