Dry Bulk Winners & Losers: The Sector Stalls

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Dry bulk stocks were broadly lower Monday, continuing a downward trend that has characterized the sector since June.

Spot rates for Capesize ships, the largest class of dry-bulk vessels, fell off late last week as iron-ore shipping activity between Australia and China and Brazil and China appeared to slow down.

The Baltic Exchange, which tracks those rates, was closed Monday for a U.K. bank holiday, but on Friday the Capesize spot rate fell below $38,000 a day. That's down sharply from 2009 highs of more than $90,000, reached in May and June, when China was in the midst of a manic ore-stockpiling program.

Also late last week, Chinese high officials indicated that they "resolutely" wish to curtail industrial production, which had gone nearly haywire this year on a wave of easy lending and government stimulus programs. Indeed, some reports say that Chinese steel manufacturing in August has notched another monthly output record.

Executives of China's biggest steel producer, Boashan Iron & Steel, said Monday morning that demand will buoy steel prices in the near term but that the overall pace of economic recovery "won't be fast." Metals analyst Anthony Rizzuto, of the investment firm Dahlman Rose, interpreted the Boashan comments as further evidence that China intends to ease back on its recent growth by curbing lending.

Word of Chinese industrial curtailment has weighed on global commodities prices, steel prices, and the dry-bulk shipping sector, whose prospects are intimately tied to the subtlest vicissitudes of the Chinese economy.