Dry bulker prices start to firm up as market sentiment improves

Market pessimism in the dry bulk industry, a trend which had established itself over the course of the year, has started to fade away over the past couple of weeks. According to a recent report from shipbroker Allied Shipbroking, “in part, this has been due to things seemingly looking calmer on the geopolitical stage then they did several weeks back, yet this has played a relatively small and unimportant part in the grand scheme of the global dry bulk trade. Over the course of the last couple of weeks we have seen the freight market slowly finding its foothold, and gaining ground well above the lackluster levels it was receiving several weeks back”.
According to Mr. George Lazaridis, Head of Market Research & Asset Valuations with Allied, “this is not to say that there has been a complete reversal and that we are now finding ourselves in the midst of a bull market, yet it has been enough to inspire optimism amongst many in the market”. Mr Lazaridis noted that “during the first half of the year the intense rebalancing act of the fleet which has served as a purpose in keeping its growth rate in check and in line with the new “status quo” of global economic development has started to “bear fruit”. With the number of vessels available and trading in the market being held at a stead number, seasonal spikes in demand have emerged right in time to give a strong boost to freight rates that had been lingering for too long around or even below OPEX levels”.
Of course, “one might say that seasonality will fade and you will once again be left with a fleet which is much larger than required, yet in reality this seasonality has helped us buy some time as the growth in trade slowly creeps at its slower pace increasing demand to the extent that it be-comes in balance and at some point might even surpass tonnage supply once again (this all depending on if we can keep the fleet growth at a lower rate than growth in trade)”, Lazaridis noted.
He added that “all this having been mentioned before, what strikes of interest now is the way the sale and purchase market in the dry bulk segment has started to react to all of this. For over a month now we have seen prices hold at a level which they were unable to break below, partially due to the fact that there was also strong resistance in the newbuilding market and strong resistance from sellers themselves. With a significant amount of the downward pressure having been alleviate (as earnings are now at much healthier levels and many in the market are starting to hold the belief that we have passed the worst of the storm) the amount of buyer looking to buy at bargain levels has not only risen but has also started to get itchy fingers and become a bit more “trigger-happy” (as if they are in some sort of wild west movie)”.
According to Allied’s analysis, “this has started to become more so the case for some of the modern units especially in the Kamsarmax and Ultramax sectors, both of which are expected to feed of much better over the coming years from the increasing trade from India. In terms of reported transactions, we have yet to see this “eagerness” reflected in pricing. There has been however a stronger demand then what had been seen over previous months and buyers are now looking to be considerably more eager to compete for units that they inspect. This in turn, if supported by the market, should start to emerge in transactions that we will be seeing come to light towards the end of August to early September, however as is always the case and nevertheless if it hap-pens now or further down the line, buyers seeing the emergence of this trend will feel that they might have “missed the market” and depending on the number of buyers that feel the same, we would likely see another round of price hikes self-fed by new rounds of buying interest and over eagerness to compete. Let’s hope this time around some will a higher degree of self-refrain before prices have overshot once again”, Lazaridis concluded.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide