Spot Rates

Yeah, no doubt. I don't doubt that we're going to be in the downturn end of the cycle for quite a while yet. I just know that invariably, it'll start to turn in the other direction. Just don't know when or how.

Absolutely. I certainly don't. I'm not an economist by trade, nor an epidemiologist. I can make some educated guesses based on being a data geek, but I don't do either thing by trade. Further, like you said, this is pretty unprecedented. 1918 comes to mind, but the world is a ton more connected these days. It's fortunate that this isn't near that bad, yet, bad enough as it is.

 

The reality of spot market Freight, is that it’s the Fluff, or Overflow, mostly. Sure there’s a lot of Steady Broker Freight. But it gets affected by everyone’s Contract Freight. When times are good, Spot Markets good. When times are bad, well look around. It’s just an extreme example of an economy running on next weeks expectations. Times like these, essential items only, like Food and Paper, Recycling products, are all that’s available. 10 yrs ago, had it not been for scrap metal, Rolled paper, and recycled whatever. I would have starved. Almost did.

 

Spot on!!!

 

Before the dot com era when computer algorithms at mega investment firms started making enormous nano second trades based on input triggers, and before bush 2 implemented the first round of TARP bailouts in 07 ?? or so... The horrible quarterly earnings reports that are soon to come out from this instantaneous viral stall of business everywhere would send the stockmarket into a freefall.

And it SHOULD. if the market price is running on human brains and emotion it will. but more and more it is run by algorithms that DONT have human emotion. So that is something to watch. A share is the price to purchase one scrap of a company and at liquidation your share should recieve that percent of the company value. When the company revenue is shrinking the share price should too. Every planet fitness is closed. Their earnings and share price should absolutely crash on fears of insolvency for lack of revenue while full rental payment liabilities are still due, for example.

China supported russia militarily in 2015 to against a nation that america supported. A proxy fight with the potential to evolve into WW3 did not move the dow/s&p/nasdaq at all. That is HUGE information.. It should have had a huge impact if the bulk of trades were human anymore. I conclude that they arent and the news stories that explain market "fears" are just daily click revenue. News reports on stocks and sports because its one of the few things that generates daily news that keeps them alive. Im saying the markets have gone off the rails forever and it is uncharted waters now.

Anyhow the schiller P/E ratio went thru the peak endzone during the housing boom, but has not been allowed to go through the necessary bottom endzone that resets the game. It was well on its way during the housing crash but was halted by insane levels of fed stimulus that have never stopped, only changed names. Its sort of like saying how long can a person stay awake on an adrenaline drip.

If the stimulus is stopped i believe it will lead to cardiac arrest. If the stimulus never stops and the necessary great depression that wipes out the speculators and bottom feeders and such is never allowed, the expense of stimulus will eventually create such inflation that we will only have two classes of citizen. With the size and volume of checks going out right now its hard to fathom tremendous inflation not occurring. I personally suspect socialism is here until the end of america and that these are battle plans from the "former" communist world, not some anomaly. Have nots are always gonna want to kill the haves, weve got 300 years of proof on that one atleast.

I dont know whats to come. The free money years always taste great but never last forever.

 

Spot market ain’t going anywhere. It’s stronger than ever, with all the 3pls and Brokers. Drivers wages have been going down since Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, along with everyone else’s. But Truckdrivers More so than most. As far as deregulation, it’s a double edge sword. The same deregulation is precisely what allows any of Us to Own our own Truck, be it Leased onto a Carrier, or Running your own Authority. All part of deregulation. Can’t have it both ways.

 

Trolling through old threads, just because, and boy howdy was my crystal ball frigging wrong here.

 

I was reading some 2024 forecasts, it seems as if we might have a bad 2024, but this small bump being seen right now is the shopping season.

not sure how bad it is yet but I don’t see it improving until there is big policy changes in Washington.

 

After the past few years, I'm not even going to bother prognosticating on the state of where things are at. I missed a lot of things (chiefly, the sheer increase in numbers of carriers and brokerages in the market) that should've been key indicators for when/how the crash would happen, and for the extreme length of the up rates we had. After a while, I guess I just got tired of looking like a dummy, lol.

 

Swing and a miss....

 

You have lots of company. You can get any kind of forecast you want if you look around long enough.