Showing posts with label baltic dry index. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baltic dry index. Show all posts

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Seasonality and the Baltic Dry Index

I'm doing some research on other economic indicators showing seasonality for a later post. An article on the BDI (Baltic Dry Index) and how shipping rates show a seasonal tendency caught my eye.

From the Financial Times:
It is with interest, therefore, that we note Icap’s latest monthly shipping report — which errs towards the notion that the move wasn’t necessarily so unusual.

According to the broker, for example, the BDI has fallen in June on 20 separate occasions since 1985 — making the recent declines relatively consistent.
As they noted:
..no other month can claim to have such a poor track record, although the month of July has shown a similar tendency towards weakness over the years.
As you can see from the graph from Stockcharts the BDI can be ... volatile.

It's important to know if a data series contains seasonal affects to it.  That's one reason I tend to show data on a year over year format which eliminates time of year influences.