Once upon a time, in Germanic languages the number 1,200 represented ‘the long thousand’ and was a traditional way of measuring large numbers. Well, today Shipping Intelligence Weekly is 1,200 issues old, and that seems like a long time indeed. How have the shipping markets fared in that time and what do the ‘long cycles’ show when the ‘SIW era’ is split into parts?

 The 1,199 previous editions of SIW (stretching over 22 years back to 1992) provide us with a huge amount of useful historical data, including the ClarkSea Index, our weekly indicator measuring the health of earnings in the four main shipping markets. There are many ways in which the history of the index can be analysed but one interesting view can be generated by lining up historical ‘cycles’.

 The graph featured here shows the result of lining up two periods of 400 SIW issues (about 8 years each) and comparing them to the performance of the index over 300 issues (6 years) since then. What this seems to tell us is that after 300 issues of the first two cycles something pretty dramatic happens!

 Looking at the first period, issues 100-400 don’t show a great deal of variation in terms of what was to follow. Between January 1994 and December 1999 the index peaked at $15,149/day and the lowest point was $8,679/day. However, following issue 400, the index took off, peaking at $24,395/day in early 2001, before crashing back down later in the year to $8,877/day by December 2001 as the dotcom bubble collapsed, and the impact of problems in Asia and 9/11 were felt by the global economy.

 The second period really illustrates shipping’s great ‘super-boom’. Just prior to issue 500, China joined the WTO and global trade took off. On the back of rapid demand growth driven by Asia, the index headed up from around $9,000/day in late 2001 to a record peak of $50,701/day in December 2007, bang on issue 800! This time the cycle held on past 300 issues and the peak was almost regained in May 2008, but drama was just around the corner in the form of the ‘Credit Crunch’. By April 2009 the index had plummeted to $7,442/day.

 The last 300 issues have seen the ‘long downturn’ with substantial deliveries of new capacity and the index stuck between $20,681/day and $7,520/day (a bit like the 1990s). Despite the index surpassing $18,000/day this year there’s been no sustained respite from the downturn yet, and as of issue 1,199 (last week) the index had fallen back to $13,348/day.

 So, the previous two periods definitely offered up drama after 300 issues. Today, we’re at a crossroads again. Supply growth looks to be under some degree of control at last but the big story of 2015 has been the erosion of demand side growth with seaborne trade expansion slowing to around 2%. There are a range of possible scenarios but one thing is for sure: nothing stops for long in shipping.

(Source : Clarksons)