Yes, you should look at FFA's out to Q4 FFA's for Cape,PM and SM. Lots of tonnage has entered last few weeks (easing port congestion/vessel delivery/ Sino Ore is running at 75+ million tonnes) But don't worry its green shoots everywhere Just as well l have a large Kool Aid poster near my terminal.... P.S. Its a dead industry/sector look at weekly chart for spot players like TBSI P.S.S. Should you ever play this sector remember wake up around 0200hrs GMT to check on Korean & Hong Kong shippers and keep and eye on Spot vs FFA's
There is no long term correlation between the market and feight rates. It means shippers offer to pay less and/or ship owners accept lower offers because of growing supply of free ships. This is a very volatile market.
My family is in ship building business in China and 2008 was an absolutely horrible year. However rates have been picking up across the board ever since the start of 2009. The actual shipping rates are much less volatile than the BDI represents.
I had bought a tanker company stock back in 2006 and I remember that the company had orders for ships to take delivery in 2009-2011. I saw many other competitors doing the same thing, ordering lots of new ships to take delivery later. They were staying pretty busy during the housing boom and ordered all these ships to pick up extra business so we americans could keep buying all that chinese junk. Now they are all going to have all these ships soon just sitting doing nothing.
You should also check : http://www.exchange.imarex.com/bdi-futures-closing-prices/category1048.html http://www.ssyonline.com/Market_Information/index.html http://www.clarksonsecurities.com/ and of course : http://www.pdc.gov.hk/eng/statistics/summary.htm http://www.elaa.net/ and http://www.ifw-net.com/freightpubs/...48F6.065acf6a61c52eed94766d1ba7da5d95d4ecd58a