Baltic Dry Index At 1693, Down 4.3%
Baltic Dry Index fell 4.3% today while Queensland floods worsened.
Bloomberg story: Australia’s Queensland Holds Emergency Cabinet Talks as Flooding Worsens.
Export-coal prices at the Australian port of Newcastle, an Asian benchmark, gained 3 percent in the three days to Dec. 31 to $126.10 a ton, the highest level since October 2008, according to Petersfield, England-based researcher IHS McCloskey. The price is for thermal coal used to make power. Coking coal, used in steelmaking, advanced 2.3 percent, according to McCloskey.
Wheat deliveries by rail to ports in the state may be halted by as much as two weeks because of flooding, according to GrainCorp Ltd., the largest grain handler in the country’s east.
Freight costs have fallen as buyers of Queensland’s coal cancel ship charters, intensifying competition for cargoes as the extra vessels become available. Freight rates as measured by the Baltic Dry Index yesterday slumped 4.5 percent to 1,693 points, taking the decline since Sept. 10 to 43 percent.
Flood waters in the town of St George, where cotton crops were already flooded in March, may peak next week, according to the weather bureau.
Chart 1. Baltic Dry Index
