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I think there is a bit of a disconnect in my mind between the BDI and actual containers or shipping at docs. The BDI is down in the 90%, but the actual amount in at the various ports tend to show drops each month of 15 to 22% (from the previous year, I'm assuming).
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That's probably a bit of an understatement. The
Baltic Dry Index provides "an assessment of the
price of moving major raw materials by sea."
The
price of shipping is down because demand is down, and because the cost of fuel is down - making it possible for shippers to offer lower prices in a highly competitive market. Demand doesn't have to drop much below capacity for a "buyer's market" to result - resulting in a dramatic drop in shipping prices from the situation not long ago when there were not enough ships available to move the goods companies wanted to ship.
If you want to know the actual volume of goods shipped, the BDI isn't particularly useful.
From Wikipedia (link above)
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The supply of cargo ships is generally both tight and inelastic — it takes two years to build a new ship, and ships are too expensive to take out of circulation the way airlines park unneeded jets in the California desert. So marginal increases in demand can push the index higher quickly, and marginal demand decreases can cause the index to fall rapidly. e.g. "if you have 100 ships competing for 99 cargoes, rates go down, whereas if you've 99 ships competing for 100 cargoes, rates go up. in other words, small fleet changes and logistical matters can crash rates..."[6] The index indirectly measures global supply and demand for the commodities shipped aboard dry bulk carriers, such as building materials, coal, crude oil, metallic ores, and grains.
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Some of the articles quoted in earlier posts in this thread do not provide a valid analysis of the meaning of the BDI. This could be either due to honest misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation. Which is the case? I have no idea.