A key concern in recent months has been that the run-up in markets and commodities was speculative in nature. Fortunately, it is accompanied by a strong resumption in global trade flows. According to data just released by the CPB Bureau of Economic Policy, global volume trade surged 5.3% in September, the biggest increase on record. Interestingly, the resumption in global trade flows was widespread across regions covered by the CPB. In particular, imports from industrialized countries increased 4% in September and are up a whopping 20% on a quarterly annualized basis.
As today’s Hot Chart shows, this was the first quarterly rise in six
quarters. This development is a confirmation that demand from industrialized countries is firming up. With such an improvement in global trade, we believe that global growth will be above trend in 2010, as also suggested by the unprecedented growth of the OECD leading indicator.
We must be wary of these YoY rates of change, 
considering the hugely depressed comps last year. For example, the Port of LA’s total October traffic was down 8.3% YoY, a big improvement from previous months’ 15-25% drops. Yet at 647,000 TEUs, it compares poorly with October 2007 (735k) or October 2006 (800k).
Also, the US is obviously an important part of the global trade flow. Since the Ports of LA and Long Beach combined handle 40% of the US container traffic, I fail to see where the global recovery comes from given that port traffic remains weak.
