With the Baltic Dry Index slipping below 300 points for the first time ever last week, speculation is growing as to where the dry bulk gauge will bottom out.
Allied Shipbroking warned in its latest weekly report: “[M]nay are feeling the pressure and are worried that this market has no bottom and has turned into an endless black hole”.
The broker’s head of market research and asset valuation, George Lazaridis, suggested that with an imminent round of cold lay-ups on the cards, the bottom of the market is fast approaching. Capesizes, he reckoned, have already hit rock bottom, and now it was time for the other bulker sizes to follow suit.
Lazaradis speculated that the BDI’s lowest likely figure could be 236 points – where all four bulker segments hit their breaking points, where it is no longer viable to fix spot fixtures.
“The current levels are already well below what the majority of owners can sustain given their OPEX levels, as such pushing more and more to take up options such as that of scrapping or laying up vessels and in turn helping improve the supply side of things,” Lararidis concluded.
