The Baltic Dry Index is anything but an arid subject for economists and investors trying to second-guess the direction of world trade and commerce.
It measures the price of shipping bulk materials around the world and as such is used as a proxy to measure the stability and efficiency of worldwide supply chains. In times of market dislocation, it rises sharply to reflect the difficulties in transporting goods — and during the pandemic it has done little else but rise, peaking at more than 5,700.
That was reflected in everything that corporate Britain was telling us: the scramble to source goods and materials meant that shipping rates had become extortionate, exacerbated by problems at ports as everything arrived at once or didn’t turn
