Ocean Freight Comments
Transportation and Export Report: Jay O’Neil, O’Neil Commodity Consulting: Global Dry-Bulk freight markets were again a mixed affair, but they remain range-bound without clear direction. The Capesize market developed too big of an inverse against the forward curve, and paper traders decided to start selling the front end to narrow the slope. In turn, this put pressure on the Panamax sector and rates gave back most of their gains for the week. Hope remains for a 2018 Q4 market rally, but it appears that it will not be easy to accomplish unless we find a resolution to the global tariff situation.
The idled container vessel fleet is climbing to about 3 percent and there are new build orders for 1 million TEU’s on the books for next year. This will continue the issue of container vessel oversupply.
The charts below represent 2018 YTD totals versus 2017 annual totals for container shipments to Thailand.
