On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Vale had come to an agreement...

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Vale had come to an agreement with China Ocean Shipping Company, or Cosco, to sell and lease back four of the company's Very Large Ore Carriers or VLOCs.

Its probably is not an issue in reality, but the agreement means that the four ships are now owned by Cosco, not Vale. So while the big ships may be going in soon, the Chinese own them, so can stop them at any time without explanation or reason. Not that that is likely to happen. But clearly Vale has lost an element of control in exchange for easy access. Vale is clearly very keen to reduce its shipping costs, which is simply good management.

The whole market is at any interesting point. There is a lot of money leaving the big banks for reasons explained in other places. How long SMSFs and other big funds will trade yield for capital losses is a good question. I think we are at the beginning of a seismic shift from the easy profits of the last few years, in top 50 companies. And the dollar's new volatility is something we have not dealt with for a while.

No profound forecast from me, but I do think some big changes are afoot.