Dry Bulk Shippers Breakng Out?

In an earlier post we mentioned that we watch the dry bulk shippers as a way to see if international business is rising or falling. Over the past few days some of the dry bulk shippers are showing signs of breaking out to the upside. Dryships (DRYS) was down in early morning trade today, but has rallied strongly since about 10 a. m. and is now up 5.62% today. The stock has now cleared a base-on-base trading range that it has been in since July on above average volume.

Dryships has moved from $5.90 to $7.14 a share in the past five trading sessions (up slightly more than 20% in that time). This is an encouraging sign.

Another encouraging sign is the market's reaction to the sell off in Asia this morning. We opened down, but are now up slightly on the day. This has been the norm recently.

Yet another good sign today is the behaviour of the S&P volatility index (VIX). Once again it spiked up on the opening (at 25.39) and has spend the rest of the day coming back down (currently at 24.04). VIX has been in a downtrend since October of 2008, and that downtrend is still intact.