40's not an expert on the baltic index. i only picked it up when i found it on the monks chart website a fair while back. link to monks and baltic, same webpage.
http://www.rubbernet.com.sg/monk's_chart.htm
i started watching it and then posting on it.
sunny, sorry, but i've no experience re your question. my guess is a good as yours. anyone buying a ship in recent yrs still has a more economic & modern one to say the older ones. my obvious guess is that it's the older ones which will be scrapped first if the slowdown continues for long time. not sure how people go about ships. leasing, or what. maybe some other hcopperite can answer that.
those links i posted do have a lot of info but i still have to study further, so ask everyone to look into it for themselves atm. once armed, i'll post more info.
as you can see the baltic can be misleading in it'sname. all shipping i believe is covered in the indices and covers for routes anywhere in the world.
i came to the conclusion (tues pm my time) that this mkt's going to tough it very bad. not too sure whether we'll see big falls back to 8000 dow and beyond. i hope more that the economy continues to dive and that the mkts forward looking attitude is preparing for recovery over next 6-9 months. that should hold the indices up/bounce about. my gut feeling says it aint gonna happen tho. i'm sure enough now we're going to see much more than a recession and more like a depression. my forecasts way back were in this vein but believe me it's hard to accept it now. i feel for everyone out there. especially those within pension age who have not only seen their super values tumble but the annuity rates sink too. thats' really hard. A TIP HERE for all of you who have yrs to go for your super. when you get within 5 yrs or so of retiring put your super into bonds. that way you've locked in. no need do lock it all in but insure against eventuallities.
i'm going into skip's post from yesterday now, so follow on further later. hope i've helped a bit so far ?