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’Freight rates go negative
Negative bond yields, negative repo rates, and now… negative freight rates. At least route-specific ones.
Bloomberg has the story here (our emphasis):
Glencore International Plc (GLEN) hired a commodity ship with the operator of the vessel earning nothing and contributing to some of the fuel costs after freight rates for hauling raw materials had their worst-ever start to a year.
Chinese New Year and the BDI
Should you be worried about the Baltic Dry Index’s recent sharp selloff? Or should you be more worried about developments in China?
We bring this up because there is apparently somewhat of an après-Chinese New Year effect when it comes to the Baltic Dry Index.
Carnival drops
London shares in the owner of the Costa Concordia were down 18.5 per cent at pixel time:
Related links:
Carnival’s profit warning – Carnival
Concordia disaster revives question of ship size –
Settling in (or not) for a long-term Libyan oil swap
Monday — a dramatic day in the story of Libyan rebels’ bid to get their country’s crude to the outside world.
It is getting out one end, at least. The Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker, is in Egyptian waters heading for Tubruq,
Supplying Japan’s fuel needs, inventory edition
Media are starting to report on fuel shortages affecting most of the earthquake and tsunami-torn area in Japan, including the capital Tokyo.
With the area having suffered major logistic and transport infrastructure collapse,
Vessel tracking in Japan
With reports of missing ships and commercial vessels running ashore all over Japan, we thought it a good time to check in on the last known whereabouts of vessels in the region, courtesy of Vessel Tracker.
What Libya crude cuts mean for tanker rates
Icap’s shipping analysts have on Monday come up with an interesting hypothetical take on how an extended Libyan crisis might impact the shipping market.
In a nutshell, think more bearish than bullish for shipping rates.
Explaining the Baltic Dry sell-off
FT Alphaville, and others, watched the Baltic Dry’s recent 60 per cent tumble, which took place over a run of 35 consecutive days, with particular interest.
Some, after all, suggested that it meant the index was no longer a valid economic indicator.
Is the contango floating storage trade back?
The last couple of months has seen much talk in the oil markets about the unwinding of floating storage positions.
Goldman Sachs was among those who noted that crude was increasingly being moved out of tankers on account of the changing structure of the oil future curve — which had gone from a steep contango a year ago to a near flattening just one month ago.
Low-cost flying liquidity collars
What is Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou up to?
We ask the question because for the second time in five months the easyJet founder has made liquid some more of his holding in the no-frills airlines.
From the RNS on Wednesday morning:
The tricky business of forecasting orderbooks
The Baltic Dry Index, a measure for the price of shipping bulk commodities, has made a wavering comeback since plunging like a stone in the fourth quarter of 2008:
Broker Icap now makes the point that seaborne dry bulk trade has recouped almost all of its lost volume,
And now weather-related shipping congestion
The natural gas, citrus, rock-salt and distillate markets have all been affected by colder than usual winter temperatures.
And just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more weather-related markets stories,
In contango, supertankers trust
Tanker trouble was still brewing on Friday, as Frontline –the world’s biggest independent oil tanker shipping company– reported an 84 per cent fall in Q3 income with a loss of $6m.
Chief Executive Jens Martin Jensen,
Another shipping firm taps the bond market
In further signs of the financing pressure facing the shipping industry, DryShips , an Athens-based commodity-focused operator owned by Greek shipping tycoon George Economou, announced late on Tuesday it had signed a waiver agreement with Deutsche Schiffsbank on $117.5m of outstanding debt.
Rebates for shipping!
The port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is arguably Europe’s most important trade hub, handling everything from dry bulk vessels and container ships to liquid-bulk cargoes and fuel barges.
In the first half of 2009,
Welcome to the sub-marine crisis
On Thursday, AP Moller Maersk — the world’s top container shipping company — spooked shipping industry watchers when it reported deeper than expected losses of $706m for the nine months to September,
An AP-Moller Maersk ouch for global trade
If you had hoped global shipping markets were returning to health in the third quarter, numbers out on Thursday from Denmark’s AP Moller-Maersk should firmly shatter that illusion.
The world’s top container shipping company reported a deeper than expected net loss of DKr3.85bn for the nine months to September,
Prepare for a junk-bond deluge in shipping
Central bank policy may have successfully pushed down Libor rates following the Lehman blow-out, but banks still appear rather reluctant to pass on those lowered costs to commercial and retail clients.
The bulk penetration myth
Here’s an interesting chart from a recent presentation by James Leake, managing director of ICAP shipping research (click to enlarge):
It shows, as Leake explained to us, that a correlation between charter rates for dry bulk carriers and container ships only really began to materialise when dry bulk rates began to soar towards their record highs of 2008.
Falling Fal of global trade
The river Fal in Cornwall is one of South England’s great beauty spots. Normally.
Because of its depth and close links to major Atlantic shipping lanes, in times of economic crisis, the Fal estuary is also a cheap place to park massive container ships:
Tanked
Most people will have heard about the dramatic collapse in dry bulk shipping rates that occurred in October/November following the paralysis that hit global trade in the weeks after the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Fleet-owners face bankruptcy threat from plunging shipping rates
Global shipping rates are set to fall by 74 per cent this year as commodity demand continues to fall in Asia and the massive glut of vessels ordered during the boom years finally takes to the seas, the Telegraph reported.
Add shipping exposure to European banks’ woes
As if European banks didn’t already have enough to worry about, S&P warned on Monday that rapidly deteriorating shipping markets will put yet more pressure on their ratings.
According to the report by Harm Semder and Andreas Kindahl (emphasis FT Alphaville’s):
Is the East heading into the red?
Following on from the sharp contraction in Chinese exports and imports reported on Tuesday, some other worrisome indicators are emerging from the region.
As RBC Capital Markets highlights in its morning note,
Container freight rates hit zero as trade sinks
Freight rates for containers shipped from Asia to Europe have fallen to zero for the first time since records began, underscoring the dramatic collapse in trade since the world economy buckled in October,
Traders profit as ship-stored oil doubles
Oil companies and traders are storing enough oil in supertankers to supply the world for one day, in one of the most striking signs of supply outstripping demand as the impact of the economic crisis overshadows a string of Opec production cuts,
Shipping charter rates soar
One of the world’s key shipping markets has begun to recover from a slump, with a revival in Chinese demand for iron ore and coal pushing some average charter prices up almost threefold in the past week.
Easy, Stelios
That’s quite some boardroom brawl brewing between EasyJet and founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
The Greek entrepreneur and shipping tycoon is refusing to sign off on the airline’s annual accounts, in a statement,
Shiver me freight rates
As if shipping hasn’t had enough of a bad time, JBC Energy reports:
As a result of the hijacking of a fully laden Saudi VLCC by Somali pirates yesterday, insurance companies are raising premiums for passage through the Gulf of Aden.
Shipping floored
An industry once plagued by insufficient capacity now sees ships stuck idle at port.
Shipping is in crisis.
The Baltic Dry Index which measures shipping costs in commodities sunk to its seventh weekly decline this week to 829 points,