Something Just Snapped: Container Freight Rates From Asia To Europe Crash 23% In One Week

• Something Just Snapped: Container Freight Rates From Asia To Europe Crash 23% In One Week
  by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com  
  One of the few silver linings surrounding the hard-landing Chinese economy in recent weeks has been the surprising resilience and strength of the Baltic Dry Index: even as Chinese commodity demand has cratered in 2015, this “index” has more than doubled in the past few months from all time lows, and at last check was hovering just over 1,100.
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  Many were wondering how it was possible that with accelerating deterioration across all Chinese asset classes, not to mention the bursting of various asset bubbles, could global shippers demand increasingly higher freight rates, an indication of either a tight transportation market or a jump in commodity demand, neither of which seemed credible.
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  We may have the answer.
  It appears that the recent spike in shipping rates was analogous to the dead cat bounce in crude oil prices: a speculator-driven anticipation for a sustainable rebound that never took place. And now, just like with crude prices, it is all crashing down…. again.
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  According to Reuters, shipping freight rates for transporting containers from ports in Asia to Northern Europe dropped 22.8 per cent to $400 per 20-foot container (TEU) in the week ended last Friday, data from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index showed.
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  read more.

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