Blog Post

Dry shipping demand is already stronger than supply, and analysts expect it to remain that way through 2009, until more ships hit the waters.  Now with the devastating earthquake in China.

Right now, and in the years to come as infrastructure and towns are rebuilt in South West China, even more raw materials will need to be imported.  

Daily charter rates have already reflected this, surging to all time highs today, as measured by the Baltic Index, which tracks shipping rates on over 40 sea lanes.  Daily Capesize rates are now trading in the $200,000 range, whereas they were $110,000/day just months ago.

The obvious winners in this mess are those shippers that do not sign long term charters (GNK, one of my top holding signs multi-year deals - but they do have several deals expiring soon, so they can re-up at these nice rates).  DRYS, which almost does exclusively daily charters shot up some 8% today.

Still very bullish on shipping.  In the light of this on top of all the rest of the world events, also very bullish on Ore (RIO, RTP), Copper (FCX), and Steel (X, NUE).  Agriculture (POT, MON, AGU) still remains a great 12 month play.