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Saturday, February 28, 2009

Back from the front - BDI trending down

Hi All

Back after a week in Japan and China visiting various trading companies and steel mills. Its not pretty. Although the news is saying that Investment Loans are up in China it appears that most of these loans have many strings attached and most of them only pertian to solid state backed enterprises. Bottom line for steel makers and supporting crew is that its sink or swim for most of them. The profitable will survive and the rest will be left to flounder. The governments are doing their best to increase infrastructure spending but some of the economic issues are beyond the reach of any helping hand. The market forces will have their say in the end.

What does all this mean for shipping pricres and the BDI index. Long term I maintain that it will be a long and painful ride for this lady. Short term look for volatility as people look for anysigns of real recovery only to be thwarted by a continous stream of gloomy news.

The china propaganda machine is working well. Ask any chinese executive and they will tell you that the Chinese economy is even worse than what is being reported...

Are the Chinese just playing poker to try and pull prices down or is this really the case. My feeling is that the truth is quite bad. No economy decides to allow millions to fall unemployed in the name of saving a few bucks on imports. The problems seem to be real.

But theres good news in every bad news story. Lots of opportunities arise in these bear markets. When everyone is running scared opportunities abound.

Yours Virtual Shipbroker

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