baltic dry has never been anything but an "oh wow" index for marketers/salespeople to get said reaction from clients and hopefully get them to transact. It has

baltic dry has never been anything but an "oh wow" index for marketers/salespeople to get said reaction from clients and hopefully get them to transact. It has that beautiful combination of seemingly being a leading indicator, and being left-field enough to make the originator seem clever. It has a very low correlation to any actual markets. People on trading floors have been pushing this baltic dry pitch for at least 10 years. It's very old news for anybody in markets and is more of an eye-roller than anything else. That the New Yorker has now latched on shows that they hope to get a bit of oh-wow out of it too. Snake oil. Baltic Dry is fun to watch, but there is too much micro going on in it for it to have any macro significance that is not coincidental.