Harpex Shipping Index is considered a good indicator of global economic fleet shipping activity since it tracks changes in freight rates for container ships over broad categories.

We can clearly see a deceleration in global trade happening at the moment.

Source: zerohedge.com

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U.S.Beige Book 

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book depicted growth expanding at a modest to moderate pace, a downgrade from the prior report and in-line with Bloomberg Economics’ assessment that growth is set to abate in the second half of the year

The October Beige Book portrayed an economy that is humming along at a solid pace. However, labor shortages worsened and constrained growth in some areas, and trade policy raised input costs and threatened broader inflationary pressures

IFO Expectations

German business sentiment deteriorated amid signs economic growth ground to a temporary halt and as risks surrounding a U.S.-China trade spat and a disorderly Brexit increased

The Bundesbank has expressed confidence that growth will pick up again after stalling in the third quarter

ECB Meeting

The ECB made no changes to its monetary policy in October and reaffirmed that risks to the growth outlook are broadly balanced…but with incoming data on growth and inflation disappointing, it might be harder and harder for the ECB to convince markets it is serious about hiking rates next year

It acknowledged that incoming data had been somewhat weaker than expected, and there has been a slight loss of momentum, mainly due to idiosyncratic factors

U.S. GDP

The U.S. economy expanded at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter as consumers opened their wallets, businesses restocked inventories and governments boosted spending, marking the strongest back-to-back quarters of growthsince 2014

The data indicate a robust job market and lower taxes continued to propel demand as government spending rose by themost since 2016

Source: Bloomberg

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