Shipping Stock Brokers

The crew of researchers following the shipping industry at Wall Street investment houses has lost another member. Research analyst Sally Smith of Alex Brown & Sons Inc. will no longer train her spyglass on the shipping industry, but will follow consumer product companies such as Black & Decker for the Baltimore-based brokerage firm. However, she will continue to keep tabs on International Shipholding Corp. – which her firm helped with a secondary offering and placement of private debt.

Marine Money caught up with Smith as she set sail on her new job for a brief chat about the shipping industry, and contacted some of her colleagues at other brokerages.

Why don’t shipping stocks in the United States attract more interest by the research departments of U.S. brokerage firms? Smith and other researchers agree that the relatively small capitalization of the industry is the core of the problem. Brokerage firms can get more “bang for the buck” covering industrrrstrustrndustries that have more public companies and stocks with a greater number of shareholders and float. “There is not a lot of trading and ultimately that is what supports and pays for research,” says Jim Winchester, an analyst at Mabon, Nugent & Co.

This is only an excerpt of Shipping Stock Brokers

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