IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/marpmg/v38y2011i6p645-672.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting short-term freight rate cycles: do we have a more appropriate method than a normal distribution?

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandros M. Goulielmos
  • Maria-Elpiniki Psifia

Abstract

General economists, as well as Maritime economists, assume that the time series they forecast follow normal distribution, and data is independently and identically distributed around the mean. This paper contests this assumption with the aid of three sets of time series: (1) The Dry Cargo Freight Index, 1741--2005: in this series the data deviate from the mean by more than three standard deviations on no fewer than six occasions, and exhibited “fat tails”; (2) The time charter freight rates for a 10-year-old, 80 000 dwt vessel from 6 January 1989 to 26 December 2008: this series also exhibits skewness and kurtosis in a leptokurtic distribution; and (3) The Dry Cargo Time Charter Index from 1971 to 2004: this series diverged from the normal distribution four times. Next, we searched more recent data for short-term cycles using the V-statistic. One cycle was found to last 4 years (2005 to 2008), which is in accordance with theory. This cycle started on 29 July 2005 and ended when it reached the (lowest) level of $4000 on 1 December 2008. A new 4-year cycle started on 1 December 2008 and is forecast to last until the end of 2010. Short-term forecasting of the cycle using V-statistic is theoretically confirmed by the theory advanced by Hampton [1990, published in 1989, ‘Analysis and shipping cycles I and II’, Seatrade Journal , 19--23. Long and Short Shipping Cycles: The Rhythms and Psychology of Shipping Markets , Monograph, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy of Transport), March, p. 66].

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandros M. Goulielmos & Maria-Elpiniki Psifia, 2011. "Forecasting short-term freight rate cycles: do we have a more appropriate method than a normal distribution?," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(6), pages 645-672, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:marpmg:v:38:y:2011:i:6:p:645-672
    DOI: 10.1080/03088839.2011.556673
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03088839.2011.556673
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03088839.2011.556673?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engelen, Steve & Norouzzadeh, Payam & Dullaert, Wout & Rahmani, Bahareh, 2011. "Multifractal features of spot rates in the Liquid Petroleum Gas shipping market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 88-98, January.
    2. Eleftherios I. Thalassinos & Mike P. Hanias & Panayiotis G. Curtis & Yannis E. Thalassinos, 2009. "Chaos theory: forecasting the freight rate of an oil tanker," International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 1(1), pages 76-88.
    3. Jarque, Carlos M. & Bera, Anil K., 1980. "Efficient tests for normality, homoscedasticity and serial independence of regression residuals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 255-259.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zheng, Shiyuan & Lan, Xiangang, 2016. "Multifractal analysis of spot rates in tanker markets and their comparisons with crude oil markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 547-559.
    2. Alexandros M. Goulielmos, 2015. "The Multi-faceted Character of Risk in Maritime Freight Markets (Panamax) 1996-2012," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 65(1-2), pages 67-86, January-M.
    3. Peter Nielsen & Liping Jiang & Niels Gorm Malý Rytter & Gang Chen, 2014. "An investigation of forecast horizon and observation fit's influence on an econometric rate forecast model in the liner shipping industry," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(7), pages 667-682, December.
    4. Wenming Shi & Kevin X. Li, 2017. "Themes and tools of maritime transport research during 2000-2014," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 151-169, February.
    5. Joan Mileski & Christopher Clott & Cassia Bomer Galvao & Taliese Laverne, 2020. "Technical analysis: the psychology of the market of dry bulk freight rates," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bierens, H.J. & Broersma, L., 1991. "The relation between unemployment and interest rate : some international evidence," Serie Research Memoranda 0112, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    2. Juncal Cunado & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta, 2024. "Realized volatility spillovers between energy and metal markets: a time-varying connectedness approach," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 1-17, December.
    3. Elie Bouri & Georges Azzi, 2014. "On the Dynamic Transmission of Mean and Volatility across the Arab Stock Markets," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 13(3), pages 279-304, December.
    4. Sun, Xiaolei & Liu, Chang & Wang, Jun & Li, Jianping, 2020. "Assessing the extreme risk spillovers of international commodities on maritime markets: A GARCH-Copula-CoVaR approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    5. Eric Fur, 2023. "Risk and return of classic car market prices: passion or financial investment?," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(1), pages 59-68, February.
    6. Georgiev, Iliyan, 2010. "Model-based asymptotic inference on the effect of infrequent large shocks on cointegrated variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(1), pages 37-50, September.
    7. Ericsson, Neil R., 2016. "Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-583.
    8. Jin, Xiaoye, 2015. "Volatility transmission and volatility impulse response functions among the Greater China stock markets," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 43-58.
    9. G. D. Gettinby & C. D. Sinclair & D. M. Power & R. A. Brown, 2004. "An Analysis of the Distribution of Extreme Share Returns in the UK from 1975 to 2000," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5‐6), pages 607-646, June.
    10. Damian Jelito & Marcin Pitera, 2018. "New fat-tail normality test based on conditional second moments with applications to finance," Papers 1811.05464, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    11. Ilham Haouas & Naceur Kheraief & Arusha Cooray & Syed Jawad Hussain Shahzad, 2019. "Time-Varying Casual Nexuses Between Remittances and Financial Development in Some MENA Countries," Working Papers 1294, Economic Research Forum, revised 2019.
    12. Lenten, Liam J.A. & Geerling, Wayne & Kónya, László, 2012. "A hedonic model of player wage determination from the Indian Premier League auction: Further evidence," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 60-71.
    13. Stephen Keef & Melvin Roush, 2005. "Day-of-the-week effects in the pre-holiday returns of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 107-119.
    14. Martha Misas A. & Carlos Esteban Posada P & Diego Mauricio Vásquez E, 2003. "¿Está determinado el nivel de precios por las expectativas de dinero y producto en Colombia?," Revista ESPE - Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, vol. 21(43), pages 8-31, June.
    15. Yuan, Di & Li, Sufang & Li, Rong & Zhang, Feipeng, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty, oil and stock markets in BRIC: Evidence from quantiles analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    16. Benedikt Gasser & Joel Stouder, 2022. "Rescue Emergencies Due to High-Altitude Illnesses Are Rare in Switzerland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-7, January.
    17. Bouri, Elie & Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar, 2021. "Volatility connectedness of major cryptocurrencies: The role of investor happiness," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    18. Evrim Mandacı, Pınar & Cagli, Efe Çaglar & Taşkın, Dilvin, 2020. "Dynamic connectedness and portfolio strategies: Energy and metal markets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    19. Jacobson, Tor & Ohlsson, Henry, 1994. "Long-Run Relations between Private and Public Sector Wages in Sweden," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 343-360.
    20. Benjamin Miranda Tabak, 2003. "The random walk hypothesis and the behaviour of foreign capital portfolio flows: the Brazilian stock market case," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(5), pages 369-378.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:marpmg:v:38:y:2011:i:6:p:645-672. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TMPM20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.