The price-volume relationship in the sale and purchase market for dry bulk vessels

This paper investigates, for the first time, the relationship between prices and trading activity in a market where real assets are traded, i.e. in the sale and purchase market for second-hand dry bulk vessels. Investigation of this issue is of interest since the level of trading activity may contain information about the sentiment and the future direction of the prices in the market. Several important conclusions emerge from this analysis. It is found that price changes are useful in predicting trading volume, which suggests that higher capital gains encourage more transactions in the market. Additionally, it seems that volume has a negative impact on the volatility of price changes. More specifically, in contrast to what is reported for financial markets, we find evidence that, in the market for ships, increases in trading activity lead to a reduction in market volatility. This can be explained by the unique underlying characteristics of the market for ships, including thin trading, which imply that increases in trading activity result in price transparency and stability. These findings indicate that practitioners in the market may use the information contained in the level of trading activity so as to guide their market decisions in the sale and purchase market.     

Price and volume dynamics in second-hand dry bulk and tanker shipping markets

The relationship between trading volume, prices and return volatility is thoroughly investigated in different second-hand dry bulk and tanker market segments. The objective is to gain fruitful insight on the sale and purchase market dynamics, and the sensitivity of vessel price movements following the arrival of new information signals in the shipping markets. Contemporaneous relationships are identified between returns and volume, particularly in the markets of handysize and panamax bulks as well as of handysize and aframax tankers. Price changes are found to have an impact on trading volume indicating that expectations to higher capital gains induce increases in trading activity. Volume appears to have a negative impact on the volatility of price changes mainly in the dry bulk market; this may be due to thin trading, limited transaction transparency and absence of vessel price quotes. The empirical findings can contribute to a better understanding of shipping markets' microstructure and price volatility dynamics by market participants. This, in turn, can be useful for investors who construct their portfolios of real assets with a view to attain superior capital gains, controlling for the underlying investment risk.     

Price and volume dynamics in second-hand dry bulk and tanker shipping markets

The relationship between trading volume, prices and return volatility is thoroughly investigated in different second-hand dry bulk and tanker market segments. The objective is to gain fruitful insight on the sale and purchase market dynamics, and the sensitivity of vessel price movements following the arrival of new information signals in the shipping markets. Contemporaneous relationships are identified between returns and volume, particularly in the markets of handysize and panamax bulks as well as of handysize and aframax tankers. Price changes are found to have an impact on trading volume indicating that expectations to higher capital gains induce increases in trading activity. Volume appears to have a negative impact on the volatility of price changes mainly in the dry bulk market; this may be due to thin trading, limited transaction transparency and absence of vessel price quotes. The empirical findings can contribute to a better understanding of shipping markets’ microstructure and price volatility dynamics by market participants. This, in turn, can be useful for investors who construct their portfolios of real assets with a view to attain superior capital gains, controlling for the underlying investment risk.     

Trading strategies in the market for tankers

This paper introduces a new approach in timing the sale and purchase of ships in the tanker market and examines the performance of this trading strategy over the period January 1976 to September 2004. Based on the long-run cointegration relationship between earnings and price, we establish a trading model which can be used as an indicator of investment or divestment timing decisions. We also perform statistical tests using the bootstrap approach in order to discount the possibility of data snooping biases and test the robustness of our trading models. Our results indicate that trading strategies based on earning-price ratios significantly out-perform buy and hold strategies in the tanker market.     

基于BP神经网络的二手船价格评估研究

二手船价格是买卖二手船决策过程中非常关键的因素。为了准确地估算二手船价格,利用BP神经网络的高度非线性运算能力以及通过学习样本数据即可对事物复杂内在规律进行精确计算的特点,将BP神经网络应用于二手船价格的估算。利用从克拉克松获取的2009年到2012年120个灵便型干散货船交易数据,建立了基于船龄、船舶载重吨(DWT)、新造船价格和一年期期租费率的BP神经网络模型,网络输出结果与二手船实际交易价格的相对误差率在10%以内。     

2010年世界船舶市场评述与展望

回顾了2010年世界船舶市场的发展,并对未来船舶市场进行了预测。随着世界经济的复苏,2010年航运市场出现反弹,虽然全年呈现震荡格局,但整体好于2009年,散货船、油船、集装箱船年平均运价均高于上年,特别是集装箱船年平均运价比上年高出一倍多。与此同时,三大船型建造市场出现轮动效应,上半年散货船引导造船市场,下半年行情有所下滑,油船订单则从第二季度开始增加,而沉寂许久的集装箱船建造市场在下半年也开始出现大量新订单。预计2011年的船舶市场将难以维持2010年的繁荣局面,但集装箱船建造市场和海工装备有望延续2010年下半年出现的良好市场行情。     

Market efficiency in the bulk freight market revisited

Given that the freight rate is the price of a transportation service that cannot be traded or stored; the traditional form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) does not apply to the freight rate price process. However, the notion of market efficiency still applies in the freight market. In particular, under the hypothesis that the market is semi-strong-form efficient, it should not be possible to make excess profit by taking chartering positions in the freight market based on public information such as past levels of the spot freight rate or the shape of the term structure of freight rates. This paper contributes to the literature by proposing an alternative test of market efficiency in the bulk freight market. We utilize technical analysis based on the history of spot freight rates and investigate the profitability of such chartering strategies for a tanker operator. The chartering decisions are based on identification of the peaks and troughs in the freight market cycles using kernel smoothing of the spot freight rate history. The empirical results suggest that a large tanker operator (e.g. a pool) could have achieved significant profits without investing in ships by trading on such information, although this does not hold in the most recent subset of the sample.     

Lead–lag relationship between new-building and second-hand ship prices

We examine lead–lag relationships between new-building and second-hand ship prices. Our analysis shows the existence of a one-directional lead–lag relationship between two ship prices. The direction of lead–lag relationship is not affected by the time evolution and age of second-hand ships, but is affected by the division of shipping sector. Particularly, directions of ship price movements in dry bulk and tanker shipping sectors are opposite. We argue that the opposite directional lead–lag relationships are caused by the difference in competition levels and the difference in the purposes of trading in the two shipping sectors.     

The empirical evidence of the leverage effect on volatility in international bulk shipping market

This paper mainly applies Nelson's EGARCH (Exponentially Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity) model to investigate the leverage effect in the presence of the international bulk shipping market. The daily return of three different types of bulk vessel in the sampling period selected has been examined. We find that all return series show a significantly negative relation in terms of return and volatility and the leverage effect on volatility is more significant in market downward movement than in market upward movement under the same magnitude of innovation, in addition, the larger vessels have much more leverage effect than smaller vessels contemporaneously. Therefore, it seems to be an inherent nature in the international bulk shipping market that the phenomenon of an asymmetric impact between past innovations and current volatility. This result from the investigation may provide investors with an insight into real characteristics of price return volatility, it is useful for investors to pre-arrange their portfolios of assets, risk management e.g. enabling them to achieve a reduction of investment risk and an increase of operation performance in profit gain.     

The impact of low sulphur fuel requirements in shipping on the competitiveness of roro shipping in Northern Europe

Annex VI of the MARPOL Convention aims for a reduction in sulphur oxide emissions from ships. The limits applicable at sea in Emission Control Areas (ECAs) were reduced from 1.5% to 1% in 2010 and are planned to be further reduced to 0.1%, effective from 1 January 2015. This paper analyses the impact of the International Maritime Organization’s Tier II/III standards introduced by Annex VI amendments adopted in October 2008 on costs and prices of roro (roll on/roll off) traffic in the ECAs in North Europe and on the competitiveness of roro shipping in the ECAs compared to trucking. We demonstrate that the new Annex VI agreement may be quite costly for the participants in the shipping industry and will result in higher freight rates. Based on a detailed price analysis on modal competition between the roro/truck option and the ‘truck only’ option on thirty origin–destination routes linked to the ECAs, we conclude that the use of low sulphur fuel is expected to increase the transport prices particularly on the origin–destination relations with a medium or long short sea section. The paper also presents the results of a survey among leading short sea operators in the ECAs in view of providing more insight on expected modal shifts and price elasticity in the short sea market.     

Recreational Leasing of Alaska Commercial Halibut Quota: The Early Years of the GAF Program in Alaska

The Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan formalized the process for allocating halibut between the Alaska commercial and recreational charter sectors. It included a new program intended to allow for “flexibility” through inter-sectoral trading, permitting charter operators to lease commercial halibut pounds to relax client harvest restrictions. Here we evaluate the first two years of lease market activity and participation. Participation from some commercial quota holders in the lease market suggests that the program provided beneficial flexibility; in fact, the number of transfers to the charter sector was greater than transfers within the commercial sector for some quota types. We also identified a high proportion of self-leasers. However, transfers to the charter sector were on average smaller than within-sector commercial transfers, and total poundage leased by the charter sector was low compared with commercial transfers. Usage of leased quota by the recreational charter sector enables the harvest of larger fish or additional fish, and provides flexibility in catch composition on halibut closure days. Finally, the value-per-pound may be higher in the charter sector, as commercial-to-charter transfer prices approached the commercial ex-vessel price.     

Highly disaggregrated models of seaborne trade. An empirical model for bilateral dry-cargo trade flows in the World economy

The aim of this paper is to estimate an empirical model of bilateral dry-cargo seaborne import flows in the international economy. Seaborne trade elasticities are estimated for the first time, utilizing the Constant Ratio of Elasticities of Substitution Homogeneous/Homothetic (CRESH) function, a function very rarely used in the past. Highly disaggregated data on volumes of seaborne trade, published by the UN, distinguish between five types of cargo according to the type of ship used for its transportation, and 30 trading regions according to the major sea-lancs used by ships internationally. Multistage budgeting is employed to make the problem of estimation tractable. An empirical model for dry-bulk cargo is estimated based on the CRESH function. Estimation of bilateral export price elasticities enables comparison of the degree of competition in each import market over export regions, and amongst import markets themselves. Risk-averse ship owners may utilize such a comparison to operate in world shiplanes with low degree of competition.     

招投标机制的本质及最低价中标法的理论分析

根据建设市场的信息特征,剖析了招投标机制的本质与功能,在此基础上对最低价中标法进行了理论分析,最低价中标法是市场经济条件下的最优招标机制,结合目前我国建筑市场的大环境,探讨了最低价中标法在我国建设市场中的应用与前景,最低价中标法是我国建设市场交易方式发展的必然趋势。     

Global Fish Trade,Prices, and Food Security in an African Coral Reef Fishery

This study evaluated the potential impact of global fish trade on local food prices by analyzing a 16-year locally collected time series of disaggregated coral reef fish products and prices that differed in their market chain linkages—ranging from local to international markets. We were primarily interested in evaluating how local and global markets interacted with the local prices of beef, fish, and maize. There was no cointegration between the prices of exported octopus and that of maize and beef over this study period. Further, the three types of fish and associated markets responded in different ways to various price changes. For internationally traded octopus, we found a positive association between price and catch rates but no evidence that the global trade in octopus markets created local inflation, particularly the prices of the fish eaten by the poor. In general, there was no evidence for price transmission from export to nonexport fish products even though fishers appeared to focus on octopus when prices were high. Consequently, fishers' behaviors and trade policies that promote adjusting fishing effort to internationally traded fish did not appear to promote poverty or food insecurity in this fishery.     

A new perspective on price dynamics of the dry bulk market

The main result of this article is that freight rates and second hand prices in the dry bulk market seem to be stationary. By unit-root tests, an established tool for testing for random walk in economic time series, the random walk hypothesis can be rejected in most cases for the freight rate samples. This result is in contrast to the findings of a number of papers during the 1990s. However, the results confirm classical shipping market models that indicate stationarity in freight rates, which is not the case if the freight rates follow a random walk. By transforming all observations from US$ to Japanese yen detrended freight rates and prices seem to become stationary and volatility is reduced.     

A new perspective on price dynamics of the dry bulk market

The main result of this article is that freight rates and second hand prices in the dry bulk market seem to be stationary. By unit-root tests, an established tool for testing for random walk in economic time series, the random walk hypothesis can be rejected in most cases for the freight rate samples. This result is in contrast to the findings of a number of papers during the 1990s. However, the results confirm classical shipping market models that indicate stationarity in freight rates, which is not the case if the freight rates follow a random walk. By transforming all observations from US$ to Japanese yen detrended freight rates and prices seem to become stationary and volatility is reduced.     

Exploring the link between oil prices and tanker rates

Given the secular and sharp rise in oil prices over the past decade, this study analyses the impact that the spike in oil prices has on tanker rates. We investigate a dynamic model explaining spot tanker rates. The magnitude of the impact of oil prices on the shipping industry, in terms of the level and volatility of spot (voyage) under bull and bear market conditions. The West African–US Gulf Tanker Rates, West Texas Intermediate spot and 3-month futures contract, and US Weekly Petroleum Inventories are analysed using cointegration and Granger causality analysis, from 1997 through 2007, in order to examine the lead–lag relationship between oil prices and tanker freight rates. Our findings show a relationship between spot and future crude oil prices, crude oil inventories and tanker rates. The significant increase of freight rates, and the simultaneous increase in oil prices, during the recent years, provides an intriguing economic environment to identify relationships between shipping market rates and oil prices. These relationships have significant implications for the markets. At the practical level, the better understanding of the relationship between freight rates and crude oil prices can improve operational management and budget planning decisions.     

Duration analysis for recurrent ship accidents

About 63% of the world’s shipping accidents are recurrent—they occur to ships that have already experienced at least one prior accident. Therefore, reducing recurrent accidents can contribute significantly to maritime safety. We study the factors affecting both first and recurrent accidents, by focusing on the duration between two accidents. Cox proportional hazard models are applied to ship accident data from 1996 to 2015, and the results identify which ships have a high risk of recurrent accidents, based on ship attributes, ship supply and market conditions, shipbuilding country, previous accident type, and ship type. The recurrent rate is high when the ship involved in the accident is old, small, flies a flag of convenience, and has no detention record. In addition, the accident risk increases when the shipping market faces a high bunker price, overcapacity in supply, a high time charter rate, or low newbuilding price. On the other hand, ships built in China and Japan have lower recurrent accident rates than those built elsewhere, although ships built in China have earlier first accidents than do others. General cargo ships have the highest recurrent accident rate, followed by dry bulkers, container ships, and tankers, in that order.     

Exploring vessel-price dynamics: the case of the dry bulk market

We investigate second-hand vessel price heterogeneity. Based on a sample of 5,591 purchase and sale transactions in the dry bulk sector over the period 1998–2016, we deploy a nonparametric regression technique to assess the determinants of vessel price and vessel price variability. Next, we use quantile regression to estimate the effect of regressors (sources of heterogeneity) at different parts of the vessel price distribution. We find evidence that main sources of vessel price heterogeneity are the age of the ship (the older the vessel the higher its maintenance cost), the 3-month LIBOR (reflecting the cost of financing) and the annual charter rate (revenues from operation). Their influence is stronger at all higher quantiles (periods of expansion) and the median of the vessel price distribution.     

Economies of container ship size: a new evaluation

Based on recent operation performance data, the earnings and costs of container service have been investigated in the context of two inches developed by the japanese and used elsewhere in East Asian shipping: charater base. Although the average size of container ships on the world's main trade routes has increased over the past two decades it is dangerous to generalize about the ecnomies of scale derived from larger ship size. The effects of ship's on voyage results vary in accordance with such factors as ship's purchase price, level of running costs, level of freight rates, voyage length, achieved load factors and accounting methods used for allocating fixed costs. The question of optimum vessel, therfore, has no generally applicable answer. Shipowners must compromise.