From the performance of the spot market, as the freight level gradually increases, the market acceptance is also orderly advancing, and the current spot freight has not seen the top. Maersk CEO Soren Skou said, "We still don't know how much cost we can recover, and how long it would take to recover our costs, but the high rates we see for now are only temporary."
Since the listing of the European Line futures in August 2023, the operation of the shipping market has gradually become a major concern for futures traders. The continuous and smooth trend of no callback has also caused the market's fear of heights.
As of today's closing, the main contract 2408 rose 2.57%, reporting 5632.2 points. The forward contract 2410 rose the most by 6.68%, reporting 4815 points. Other forward contracts have also risen by more than 3%.
From the perspective of the 11 months since its listing, this variety has accumulated an increase of 4525.7 points, an increase of up to 402%, which is the highest increase among all futures varieties in the past year. Even the previously popular gold futures have only increased by 29% according to their recent highest point in the past year.
Today, the total amount of fund settlement for this variety exceeds 9.116 billion yuan, and the total position is as high as 106,748 hands. According to a rough estimate of the fund size displayed by Wind Financial on the same day, this fund size can rank 15th among all varieties, which is extremely rapid growth for a variety that has just been listed for less than a year.
From a fundamental perspective, the Red Sea crisis is still the core support for the rise in shipping prices. As Houthi militants' military operations in the Red Sea region continue to escalate, including a series of events that claimed to have attacked the U.S. aircraft carrier "Eisenhower", shipping companies have had to reconsider their route arrangements.
Jia Ruilin, a senior researcher in shipping at Galaxy Futures, told Cailian Society, "Starting from December 2023, shipping companies were influenced by the maritime crisis and started to go around the Cape of Good Hope, reversing the surplus pattern of the past, and influennced by the background of the tariff increase due to the trade war, triggering a continuation of this year's rising trend in freight rates. Geopolitically, the conflict between Israel and Palestine has a long-term trend, which has strengthened the expectation of shipping companies to continue sailing around. However, the trend of container freight rates still depends on changes in the supply-demand gap."
"At present, the overall central price of shipping rates is still rising, and the demand for goods is still high under the support of the continuing surge in rush-hour freight." She predicted that the European spot freight rates in July-August will gradually reach a high point and then enter consolidation.
Spot freight rates have reached their highest levels since the pandemic, and there may still be room for further increases in the second half of the year.
It is understood that due to the short listing time of the European Line futures, there is not much historical data available for reference. However, from past history, the corresponding spot price of this index has reached an all-time high.
According to the latest SCFIS index released by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange on July 1st, the latest report of the European route is 5353.02 points, a new high for the year, up 12.3% from the previous week. As of now, SCFIS's European route has risen continuously for 10 weeks, with a cumulative increase of up to 151% (from April 22 to July 1).
Jia Ruilin introduced that the position of EC2408 over 5000 points on the market made a new high since the launch of the European Line futures variety, and its corresponding spot freight rate reached the highest point since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic.
She further stated that the current 5353.02-point SCFIS European Line still has a gap compared with the historical high of more than 10072.17 points in January 2022 during the epidemic. However, it should be noted that the current supply-demand tension background and the current supply chain are not as chaotic as during the epidemic, and port congestion has not yet appeared during the epidemic and the serious supply-demand mismatch in 2021-2022, and it is not suitable to anchor the freight rate level during the epidemic.
As for the future trend of shipping prices in the second half of the year, institutional analysis believes that there may still be room for price increases.
Lei Yue, the head of shipping research at Haitong Futures, told the media that the current spot booking demand is still stable and there is no situation of poor demand. From the perspective of spot market performance, as the level of freight rates gradually increases, market acceptance is also advancing in an orderly manner, and current spot freight rates have not yet reached their peak.
Cosco Shipping Holdings, an industry company, also judged to the media that as the European and American markets continue to climb steadily, there is a certain sign of turning around in the market, coupled with the reduction of effective shipping capacity in the market due to rerouting, which has caused the shipping market to maintain a full load status and a significant increase in spot market freight rates.
According to publicly available data, the upstream of the shipping industry mainly includes the design of shipping equipment such as ships and containers, while the midstream includes the operation of ships and ports, voyage management and route development, safety management, and related facility leasing fields. The downstream mainly consists of enterprises with trade and transportation needs.
Among them, shipping companies in the middle are the main price publishers. At present, the world's shipping market is mainly controlled by three major shipping alliances, namely 2M (Mediterranean Shipping, Maersk), Ocean Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen, Orient Overseas), and THE Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, Yang Ming, ONE, HMM).
These three major shipping alliances cover the world's top nine shipping companies, controlling about four-fifths of the world's container shipping capacity. The trade scope mainly covers east-west routes covering Asia, Europe, and North America.
These three shipping alliances cover the top nine shipping companies in the world, controlling about four-fifths of the global container capacity. The trade scope mainly covers the east-west direction routes that span Asia, Europe, and North America.
On Monday of this week, shipping giant Maersk stated that the next few months will be challenging for shipping companies and enterprises, as the interruption of container transportation via the Red Sea will continue until the third quarter of this year. The company also stated that the joint escort operations of European and American countries have so far failed, and governments need to strengthen security cooperation in the Red Sea region.
In the past year, major global shipping companies have announced multiple price hikes for their services. And in recent days, related enterprises have once again raised their prices.
According to Modern Logistics News, Mediterranean shipping has increased prices for its voyages to Europe starting July 1, with a maximum increase of $9800 per container. Meanwhile, Maersk Line has also notified customers that its shipping price for voyages to Europe will be increased by $2000 per container, with a maximum of $9400. In addition, Mediterranean shipping company has announced an adjustment of prices for voyages to the US East Coast, with a $2000 increase per container starting July 1st, and if the adjustment is successful, the price will exceed $10,000, reaching $10,400.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc said: "The longer this situation lasts, the higher our costs will be. We don't know how much cost we can recover and how long it will take. The higher rates we see now are only temporary."