Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: Chartering activity slowed this week and motivated Baltic Index traders to either take some profits or reduce their positions in the third quarter 2017 markets. Consequently, things floated lower for the week. I believe the markets also must be mindful of the fact that, if everyone starts to get to excited about a market turnaround too soon, we will just fall back into the same self-defeating strategy of increasing the new vessel order book. We have already seen some signs of that starting. Market economics still have to encourage additional scrapping and zero new vessel building. Of course, this creates a serious dilemma for global shipbuilding yards and national employment.
Below is a recent history of freight values for Capesize vessels of iron ore from Western Australia to China:
The charts below represent YTD 2017 versus 2016 annual totals for container shipments to the Philippines.
