Container freight futures edged up by 1–5% week-on-week, driven largely by short covering rather than fresh buying. Overall open interest fell below 90,000 contracts for the first time since the Lunar New Year holidays, a sign of waning market enthusiasm. Open interest in the main EC2506 contract that expires in 3 months dropped by 25% over the week. Trading sentiment has cooled further, with weekly trading volumes tumbling by 24%. The SCFIS released after the close of trading on Monday slipped
Container freight futures retreated over the past week with growing concerns over the carriers’ persistent rate cuts. Despite MSC’s announcement on 12 March to raise its Asia-North Europe base rates to $4,000 per FEU from 1 April, it has provided rate offers at $2,090 per FEU until 6 April, effectively undermining their planned rate hike. Trading volumes fell by 17% week-over-week, while open interest remained largely unchanged as trader wait for fresh directions. Despite last week’s sharp decl
The pace of the SCFI and SCFIS declines continued to accelerate last week with the SCFI assessment to North Europe falling by 11.9% while the SCFIS that came out after market close on 2 Sep dropped by 6.9% following the previous week’s 7.3% decline. Carriers continue to cut their spot rates, with average FAK quotations falling below $6,000/FEU with carriers giving up all the rate gains secured since June this year. Asia-North Europe volumes are down 5% from their peak, with average capacity uti
CoFIF prices moved up on each of the 4 trading days last week before the Chinese New Year holidays before the market closed for its extended holiday on 9 Feb to 18 Feb. Traders were reluctant to hold on to their positions during extended market closure given the steep backwardation in the CoFIF market with forward prices still trading at a discount of up to 60% lower than current SCFIS prices. The Asia-North Europe April contracts (EC2404) closed at 2,108 compared to the most recent SCFIS level
After nearly 6 years of suspension, container freight futures are returning to the Shanghai market today. The turnover reached Rmb3.8bn ($500mn) in the first 30 minutes of trading, which is similar to the weekly freight revenue of the FE-NEUR route. source: BANDS FinancialThe product is now called Containerized Freight Index Futures (CoFIF). This product is being traded at INE (Shanghai International Energy Exchange), a subsidiary of Shanghai Future Exchange and is regulated by CSRC (China Sec