to rotterdam, freight prices have increased by an eye watering 570% in the last 12 months. but shipping costs between asia and the us also dropped i6% last week, marking the first significant dip since august. costs for shipping containers have fallen by more than 51% on some routes between september and october. the spot rate for shipping a 40 foot container from china to los angeles has dropped from us $17,500 to us $8,500. joining me now is lars kenson, independent shipping analyst and ceo of vespucci maritime. welcome, hopefully you can explain this to us. this is a sign of the market being extremely unsettled. there was a massive bottleneck leading up to the holiday in china where everybody tried to move their cargo as early as possible. this basically means there wasn t enough space for everybody. now you have a slump, slowly some of these