It took me a while to see that the dramatic looking spikes and falls in the graphs where only due to the lower range of the y axis being cut out.
The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
81–90 of 125 posts
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's perhaps more egregious because the article leads with Volvo truck orders falling to approximately zero in a 99% one year drop. This anchors the reader to misread 50% reductions from peak over the past five years and leaved reasons for the spikes which created the peaks unexamined. One thing is clear is that the article doesn't point to a Volvo.
Regarding Volvo truck orders, btw: These are the global numbers from their latest quarterly IR release, regarding Q3 2015 (Their Q4 report is due next Friday): http://www3.volvo.com/investors/finrep/interim/2015/q3/q3_20... Net order intake, number of trucks: 42,648 (Q3 2015) 50,449 (Q3 2014) and, also: 58,024 (Q3 2007) This last (global, not european) number from: http://www3.volvo.com/investors/finrep/interim/2007/…
Also interesting, from their report:
> In the third quarter of 2015, net sales for the Volvo Group amounted to SEK 73,309 M (67,222) with growth coming from North America and Europe. However, this was partly offset by a significant decline in South America. Adjusted for changes in currency exchange rates net sales increased by 1% compared to last year.
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#83The dry index is a poor predictor of future economic health or stock market returns http://greyenlightenment.com/economics-myths-part-7-the-balt... The index was flat in the 80' and 90's yet the global economy boomed. Not sure why stories that are sensationalist hyperbole get voted to the front page anyway
The best indicator for anything transportation is utilization and how much stuff is actually being moved. Not just the price of moving something from A --> B. Yes, the presence of more movers, as the article points out, suppresses the price because people are competing to offer the lowest possible price to get the business. And, shippers did start investing in new builds extensively when it looked like the economy was set to go boom again which is also having a negative effect price due to the presence of more hulls on the market.
Unfortunately, the amount of stuff being moved is not public record and stays locked away on internal books that get summarized for the quarterly financials if the company is publicly traded. Which means we can infer how much stuff is being moved by reported dollar value but that's a lagging indicator. This leaves us with price to move goods as the major inference point to determine the health of commodities shipping and if the price is crashing, it's usually an indicator there's not a major uptick in the demand for commodities. When the price skyrockets it indicates people are trying to move a ton of stuff quickly and there isn't capacity to do it (causing more hulls to be built) and indicating the economy is hopping.
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is all the more reason to treat technology not as an externality as it's being done now but as an integral part of GDP.
At least now, yes. It was certainly an odd market before, somewhat segregated from other industries, but now technology is the driver behind all sorts of market moves - from lower prices to lower costs and higher profit margins to being part of almost every advantage one competitor gains over another. I think people imagine "technology" is only Uber et al and can still be segregated into its own market, but some of t…
Hmm. I would buy that it wasn't easy to include it into economic models but it wasn't impossible and for a long time it's been an important factor to understand economy. Right now it's practically impossible to say anything relevant about the economy without because we don't have a model that includes technology.
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
they’ll teach you, correctly, that if the government spends n dollars to stimulate the economy, it doesn’t really matter what it’s spent on Forgive my ignorance on these matters - I know that if the government pays a work crew the work crew ends up with money in their pockets regardless of what specifically they build; but surely if you pay a work crew to build a useful freeway or a bridge (or a rail system if you pr…
Very true! Yet another reason why so many economies are absurd; they do not have properties we'd want an economy to fulfill.
Most "economies" are financial systems rather than actual economies.
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#86PG actually addressed this in a recent tweet:
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#87Cheap oil (ie, cheap fuel) presumably also affects this.
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, I'm grabbing as much VFINX as I can. It's priced at February 2014 levels right now. That's a silly price for two pretty good years of global economic growth.
Is that same as S&P? Not sure I can get Vanguard from here.
Vanguard trades on Euronext, e.g. https://www.euronext.com/en/products/etfs/IE00B3XXRP09-XAMS
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy it. Boom & bust cycles are driven by the fundamental difficulty of quantifying value. Since there is no true value, people base their opinions on those of others (+delay), leading to "inertia," leading to oscillation. The government might exacerbate the oscillations, but the lion's share of responsibility lies with the market. Complaining that the oscillations happen because the market "just isn't free en…
What you're describing might explain fluctuations, but it's inadequate and incomplete for the business cycle. Virtually no one, not even Keynesian or other left-economists support make-work. It's mostly an idea favorable to laymen, or often done for more nationalistic rather than economic reasons. FDR was inspired by William Trufant Foster's and Waddill Catchings' policy advice for instance, who had Keynesian-esque u…
My understanding is that FDR's "make-work" policies weren't only that - they were involved in massive infrastructure improvements which paid economic dividends, and building out parks, which provide cheap entertainment for the public. Perhaps there were others that were less useful, though?
Re: The Shipping News Suggests Economic Weakness
#90The Volvo chart clearly shows that it's seasonal. Q3 has a big dip each of the last 4 years.
That jumped out at me also. It seems really obvious that there is a sharp drop in Q3 orders of trucks each year.