An interesting article over on SeekingAlpha recently “Baltic Dry Index’s fall misleads investors.” The author pointed out that while the BDI is down, there is also a surplus of ships, so that the BDI weakness is not entirely due to lower levels of trade. Among the discussions that followed was a comment/question about the seasonality of imports and exports. I collected data from the Port of Los Angeles and trade the Census Bureau. The chart below shows US exports of goods (not services) plotted against port activity at Los Angeles. Not surprisingly a good correlation but I’m not sure if you can glean any seasonal trends from the data (and the data pre-2000 is much the same).
The import data correlation is not quite as good as the export data but it is tempting to conclude that some sort of seasonal pattern exists with import lows earlier in the year. Incidentally for a very clear example of a seasonal trade pattern have a look at imports from China.
So part of the rebound in import activity could be viewed as a seasonal pattern. We can assume that the decline in imports reflects the fall in consumer demand and/or a fall in anticipated consumer demand by importers.
Pretty much every metric you can find collapsed (overshot?) early in 09. The data shows an increase in containers being moved since the numbers collapsed, and an increase in trade in (declining) dollar terms, but also shows that we are some ways off from a true recovery.
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