Crude Oil Futures
Last week, U.S. gasoline inventories unexpectedly increased by 1.7 million tons month-on-month, and international oil prices fell sharply one after another. Although there was a rebound last Friday, they still fell significantly for the week. Among them, New York crude oil futures fell 7.09%, and Brent crude oil futures fell 5.33%. In terms of domestic oil prices, according to data from Oriental Fortune Network, as of 14:00 on May 13, the price of Brent crude oil was US$74.17 per barrel, a decrease of 1.08%.
Rubber – prices fell
At the beginning of this year, the main price of natural rubber was running at a high level. On January 3, the price of rubber reached as high as 13,125 yuan/ton. After that, the price of rubber began to fall for several rounds, falling below 13,000 mark all the way to 11,770 yuan/ton at the end of last month. According to data from SunSirs, as of May 12, the price of natural rubber was 11,656 yuan/ton, too weak to rise.
Carbon Black – runs weak
On May 12, the price of carbon black was 8,600 yuan/ton, a drop of 24.89% from 11,450 yuan/ton on February 12 this year, which also made the price of carbon black no longer arrogant.
It is unlikely for freight rates to rebound in the second half of the year
The container freight rate continued to decline last week, and the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) fell below 1,000 points for two consecutive weeks. According to the latest data released by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange last week, the SCFI index fell 1.44 points to 998.29 points last week, a drop of 0.14%. The increase or decrease does not exceed 1%, showing that the freight rate is basically close to bottoming out. The latest Ningbo Export Containerized Freight Index (NCFI) closed at 705.5 points, down 1.2% from the previous period. Except for the slight rise of the Western Mediterranean route, the major routes all declined. In terms of freight forwarding rates, the Baltic Freight Index (FBX) shows that the current China/East Asia-US West freight rate fell 11% week-on-week to US$1,516/FEU; the China/East Asia-US East freight rate fell 4% week-on-week to 2410 USD/FEU. At present, the latest industry estimate is that the bottoming out of freight rates will be extended to the second quarter, or to the third quarter which is not rule out.
