Markets/Trades

Trading in China ended on Thursday last week as markets in China closed from 29 Sep to 8 Oct for national holidays. Prices of the CoFIF came down between 12% and 20% WoW, benchmarking the physical market where spot rates for FE-NEUR are plummeting as players are entering into the bidding season for the 2024 contracts. SCFI was just below $600/TEU at market close last week but actual going spot rates could be already much lower. Average daily trading volume last week rebounded by 1.5 times back

Global containership capacity is growing at an average rate of over 190,000 teu a month since April, after accounting for new ship deliveries and capacity upgrades and deducting scrapped capacity and other deletions. This pace of growth is the fastest rate ever recorded for the container markets and is set to continue for the next 2 years. Compared to the growth spurt in 2006-2008 and 2014-2015, when the average monthly growth rate was just 120,000 teu per month, the current growth burst will

Transpacific freight rates have continued to drop, but latest SCFI rates have not fully reflected the current market rates that are already $200-300 lower than reported, with rates to the West Coast reaching $1,500 while the the East Coast market is even weaker with rates as low as $2,000 are being offered. Although THE Alliance have announced the withdrawal of the PN3 service in October, the impact is limited as it only accounts for 3% of total capacity on the West Coast. Carriers have not adj

One month in, the Container Freight Futures Index (CoFIF) were up 13-26% while the spot freight rates were down by 30%. For the trading interests in CoFIF, trading volumes has been down by 58% but open interests have been tripled, meaning less day-trading while more positions taken on longer term views. Last week, the prices of CoFIF continued to drip while suffered another big drop. However, the price for CoFIF is still surprisingly resilient, in our view, given uncertain economic outlook for

The Panama Canal transit restrictions have not stopped carriers from adding 20% of incremental capacity on the FE-USEC route since the end of August, with the average capacity deployed over the last 5 weeks reaching 246,000 teu, compared to 204,000 teu in the preceding 5 weeks. Capacity utilisation has slipped to 85% in the meantime, while the SCFI freight rates tumbled from over $3,100/feu to 2,550/feu with rates as low as $2,100 currently on offer. Although carriers have cancelled 40% of the

Transpacific freight rates are eroding rapidly, with carriers slashing rates on both the West Coast and East Coast by as much as $500 below the current SCFI assessments. There is little hope of a rate rebound over the October holidays in China despite the increase in the number of blank sailings that will mostly hit Asia last port departures on week 41, with up to 40% of the weekly capacity removed. The lack of permanent capacity cuts will continue to put pressure on transpacific rates. Rates

CoFIF closed last week (15 Sep) down 1-3% in price and down 47% in trading volume. Daily turnover dropped below $1bn for the first time since CoFIF launch on 18 Aug. Open interests, the balance of CoFIF that traders hold overnight, was up 9% WoW. The influx of liquidity on 5 Sep turned out to be due to one trader’s irregular position building that has been stopped by the exchange as per a notice published in INE’s Chinese website after market close on 5 Sep. To raise barrier for irregular tradi

The erosion in charter rates continue, with further drops expected as the market slips into the traditional cargo slack season in October. Capacity utilisation on all key routes are trending lower and this could kill carriers appetite for further tonnage. SeaLead has chartered its largest ship taking over the 10,114 teu EXPRESS BERLIN from Danaos. COSCO has also received last week the first 7,092 teu newbuilding that it has chartered for 3 years from X-Press Feeders. Russian operators continue

The 1 September rate gains on the transpacific have all but evaporated, with rates to the US East Coast falling sharply with the SCFI assessment registered a 8.4% drop last week. Capacity utilization has dropped on the East Coast with average capacity deployed in September reaching a record high of almost 250,000 teu per week or 12.5% higher compared to August. In contrast, average capacity to the West Coast is  7.4% lower in September, which has only partially stemmed the rate fall. Rates to

CoFIF closed another week up only 1-3% across its 5 contracts while average daily turnover was up 46% WoW back to $1.9bn a day. Although the spot SCFIS reported 8% WoW drop after market on 4 Sep, the CoFIF market saw a huge boost of liquidity the next day (5 Sep) where total trading volume jumped to 400,000 lots, the highest since the launch of CoFIF, while the price of most traded contracts, EC2404, went up 7% for the day. Though, the market quickly gave up most of those 7% gains in the follo