Deflation and the Baltic Dry Index

The Baltic Dry Index is a measure of the cost to ship commodities. It's an index we don't hear much about but it can be a good leading economic indicator just like the Corrugated Box Index (I don't know if CBI is real or not but I had a friend in the box business and the number of cardboard boxes he shipped was a good indicator of economic activity.) In 2003, Daniel Gross wrote about the BDI when it was booming. Currently, the BDI is at 700, a level it has not seen since 1986! Earlier this year it was trading at around 12,000. See this chart from Bloomberg.