PEAK PEEKING

Part 2 of a 2 part series

By Geoff Uttmark

Maxima and minima may provide drama, but fortunes are made or forgone at the inflection points. Missing a market turn does not mean taking to the boats, if the right options are in place.

Think figuratively! It’s the only way to make sense / cents of shipping. Take, for instance, the superlative “Ships are the biggest machines on earth.” True enough, so long as “earth” is taken figuratively. Again, consider trading ships. Not the routine day-in, day-out business of transporting cargoes in them that comes to most minds, but actually buying and selling ships themselves. It’s a game of figuring among giant trading houses, aristocrat owners, merchant captains and daring wanabees that combines information, intuition, courage and capital. “It’s in the blood,” say the Greeks, and they should know. But has another kind of figuring, i.e. cold-blooded arithmetic – or more precisely, calculus, entered the when to buy or sell equation? For those who know the difference between transporting raw materials and transforming raw data such as shown in Figure 1, the signs are there that the recent spate of deliveries to owners who had rarely, if ever, committed to newbuildings in the past might have been more than coincidence or herd instinct.

This is only an excerpt of PEAK PEEKING

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