The shipping index has dropped 50%. What does it mean?

The Baltic Dry Index – which measures the cost of shipping goods around the world – has fallen almost 50% in a month. The last big plunge came in the credit crunch, when global trade froze up. So should investors be worried? John Stepek takes a look.

Stock markets have had a rough week or so. But that's nothing compared to what's been happening in a slightly more obscure market.

Yesterday, the Baltic Dry Index saw its 27th consecutive day of losses. That's the longest continuous slump for five years.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.