Total 288 Posts
Maersk’s high spot rate quotes helped to boost short term market sentiment, but skepticism over the sustainability of the current high rate levels heading into 2025 continues to prevail in the CoFiF futures market. The EC freight futures traders were spooked by reports of a Gaza ceasefire as the longer dated container freight futures for 1H 2025 contracts corrected by 20-30% WoW. Near term contracts for 2H 2024 remain firm, with EC2408 and EC2410 recording marginal gains backed by the 4.0% gai
Most of the Container Freight Index Futures, CoFIF, went limit down today on news of the cease fire framework being within reach. But we only found such story on Washington News. No other major news channels reported a ceasefire deal being concluded. 190k contracts changed hands today, which the highest trading volume since mid May. Though, no sign of liquidation in the market as open interests rose to year-to-date high with position-building increasingly concentrated on the contracts expiring
With the rest of its main rivals pushing ahead with their capacity expansion plans, Maersk has been stagnant with its capacity operated capped at 4.3m TEU since 2017 as the Group pursued its logistics integrator strategy. This is set to change as Maersk stated last week that it will be “doing whatever it reasonably can to bring supply in line with businesses’ demand for capacity”, as it hints to an imminent reversal of its self-imposed capacity cap. The move follows Maersk’s withdrawal from it
SCFI rates to North Europe slipped back marginally after last week’s 12.5% gain with the 1 July rate increase still largely in place. Carriers are still pushing for a mid-July increase, with mixed views on whether this fresh round of rate hikes will stick. Capacity utilization has slipped in the last 2 weeks, with the launch of 3 new FE-North Europe services and bunching departures on 3 other strings adding some 100,000 teu of additional slots to the market. Slot availability will be down over
EC freight futures to North Europe tumbled on 8 July, with 4 out of the 6 contracts hitting their daily 16% limit down level, while the two exceptions EC2408 and EC2410 dropped by 4.1% and 15.6% respectively. The daily price movement limit will be revised from 16% to 19% for contracts expiring in December onwards starting from 9 July. Open interests went up 2% WoW with traders taking more overnight positions for EC2410, EC2504 and EC2506. The EC market was spooked by concerns that freight rates
SCFI spot freight rates to North Europe surged by 12.5% with the peak season demand surge continuing while supply is still constrained by port congestion. Pre-GRI cargo bookings surged ahead of the 1 July rate hikes which pushed up demand further despite new capacity from Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM as well as several extra loaders using smaller ships. The launch of MSC’s Britannia in July will put further pressure on overall capacity utilization to North Europe which remains tight despite the intr
The EC freight futures to North Europe remain bullish with buying interests shifting towards the longer dated contracts in 2025 with EC2502 (February 2025) and EC2504 (April 2025) contracts registering double digit gains last week, bringing them above the corresponding months’ closing rates in 2024. The newly launched EC2506 contract gained 32% since the launch last Tuesday on rising conviction that the Red Sea crisis will last through 2025. However, the EC2408 contract for August 2024 slipped
The container market remains red hot with short term charter rates breaching the $150,000 per day benchmark and spot freight rates rising above the $8,000/feu level, setting new highs not seen since the end of 2022. New services out of Asia continue at a rapid pace, led by the Mexico route with 6 new services launched since May, followed closely by 5 new services to the US West Coast and 3 new services to North Europe. There is clearly insufficient tonnage available to keep up with the rampant
SCFI spot freight rates to North Europe rose a further 3.8% last week, while rates to the Med were largely flat with a gain of just 0.1%. The tighter capacity and bottlenecks around Southeast Asia and North Europe ports have helped to narrow the rate gap between North Europe and Med which has shrunk to $500/teu compared to a peak of over $1,000/teu just 2 months earlier. Rates look set to continue to rise in July but the pace of the rate gains could slow as the recent capacity additions to Nort
EC freight futures traded to new highs across all contracts through April 2025, with the main August 2024 contract rising by 12% WoW to 5,399 points. The latest SCFIS as at 24 June increased by 1.6% to 4,766 with current futures prices implying a 13% upside for spot freight rates from Shanghai to North Europe between now until to the end of August. The bullish outlook looks set to persist in the coming week as rates remain firm with a further round of FAK rate increases due to be applied on 1 Ju