Recovery Underway? Maybe, Maybe Not

Two items which are noteworthy.

Earnings for very large crude carriers, the industry’s biggest ships, plunged 75 percent from a year earlier to $11,624 a day, according to figures from Clarkson Plc (CKN), the world’s largest shipbroker. A surplus of the supertankers seeking charters in the Persian Gulf averaged 21 percent during the first quarter, the largest glut since 2009, according to market surveys by Bloomberg.

“Crude rates remain in the doldrums,” RS Platou Markets AS, an Oslo-based investment bank, said by e-mail today. VLCCs earned $17,000 a day on average in the first quarter, down 32 percent from a year earlier, it said....--quoted at Bayou RenMan

Is that entirely the result of US fracking success?  Not likely.

Here's the second:

Copper futures are headed down.  Copper is 'the Old Farts' econometric'; it is a component of practically every manufactured item in the world; when its price is going down, so is economic activity.

Straws in the wind.........