Markets/Trades

EC opened 1-2% lower, with the main contract down 3.2% at the intermission of the morning session, on slightly better volume than the same period yesterday, when the main contract fell for the first time in two weeks. The liners' online quotations have not changed much, although OOCL has revised up its rates for several departure dates in October, reversing its move from yesterday. The lack of upward revisions for freight rates on departure dates before November 1 suggests that demand is still

EC contracts rose again, with strength shifting to the February-April 2025 contracts on relatively lower volume, although open interest continues to increase. The overnight changes in the liners' quotations are modestly bearish; for example, OOCL has reduced its October rates by 3-5%. We would have expected freight rates to strengthen in anticipation of a successful General Rate Increase. Moreover, liners are still implementing some blank sailings for November, which does not convey any confide

EC contracts up 3-8% this morning with bids focusing on the near term contracts e.g. EC2412. Evergreen and MSC join the other liners to lift their November FAK rates quotation to over $4,000/FEU with Evergreen quoting $4,320/FEU and MSC quoting $4,540 /FEU. Average utilization continued to improve. COYHAIQUE, from Hapag Lloyd's independent service CGX left Singapore yesterday at 93% utilization, which is better than the same ship's last departure from Singapore in July when it registered only

EC opened lower but then recovered throughout the day, supported by decent volume and increasing open interest. The main contract, EC2412, ended the day higher, while longer-dated contracts declined, following yesterday's trend. The main delta today in liner's online quotations were ONE's lifting its online quotations, and COSCO published its November rates at $4,800 per 40-foot container. Average utilization for alliance vessels departing from the Far East continues to increase. The MUNICH MA

Shanghai-North Europe freight futures have rallied since 10 October with traders placing their bets on a rate rebound in the next 2 months. December 2024 contracts are now trading at a 16% premium over October on expectations that carriers will be able to secure part of their planned rate increase in November and hold the higher rates through December on the back of firmer year-end cargo demand. However, the post-Chinese New Year rate rally have fizzled out with forward rates for April, June and

Carriers’ reluctance to pull out more capacity in the last 2 weeks have hurt their efforts to hold rates post Golden Week as Asia-Europe rates continue to weaken with the SCFIS registering a 10.2% decline on Monday following last week’s 15.9% decline. Although rate surveys suggest a small uptick in carriers’ quotation, there are still some carriers offering aggressive rate discounts of below $3,000/feu. Several carriers have announced rate hikes from 1 November aimed at raising spot freight ra

Container freight futures being traded in Shanghai continue their rally this morning as liners started to revise up their online FAK quotations and the utilization for vessel departed over the weekend showed sequential improvement. Next data point is the SCFIS to be released at 3pm today. The last SCFIS suggests a freight rates of around $4000 per 40' container. The likely freight rates for last week, for which today's SCFIS will be based, could drop to $3600-3700 i.e. 8-10% WoW drop. Liners

There was a significant rally in the EC this morning. Most of the strength was seen in December contract, with the liner's FAK rate quotations for shipments departing in November being higher than those for shipments leaving this month. However, quotations for shipments departing on the same dates were mostly revised downward overnight. We spoke with various cargo owners, and most anticipate a sequential increase in volume in November. This suggests that the market could be moving out of the s

EC contracts dropped 15-17% during the morning session on the first trading day after the Golden Week holidays, influenced by the SCFIS report from the previous night and movements in the Chinese equities market. Carriers' on-line FAK freight rates quotations released today, compared to the same from last working day (30 Sep) before Golden Week, mostly remain lower. Hapag Lloyd and ONE raised their quotations since 30 Sep, which however  have not been followed by Maersk and MSC. Lunar New Year

The escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict in the Middle East has sparked fears of a potential disruption to vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. The impact on the container markets will be far less severe compared to the tanker and LNG markets, as the Middle East Gulf is mostly an import market with very little exports of any strategic importance that are shipped in containers. Middle East Gulf ports located north of the Strait of Hormuz handled a total of 29m teu of containers in 2023, acc