EXPLORING THE CYCLICAL STANCE OF THE SHIPPING MARKET; INTRODUCING THE SHIPPING CLIMATE TRACER

摘要

Business surveys are a popular tool for business cycle analysis. A standard way of using survey results is plotting the answers to specific questions, or combined indicators thereof, against time. This paper presents the methodology and construction of a graphical representation, the Shipping Climate Tracer, helping to visualize the cyclical stance of the shipping industry. Such graphical representation visualizes and analyzes the state of the shipping market using confidence indicators derived from business surveys. The Shipping Climate Tracer is based on smoothed confidence indicators and plots their levels against their month-on-month changes, resulting in circular, counter-clockwise movements through the four quadrants of the graph. The latter directly corresponds to a turning-point oriented definition of the shipping cycle phases. The Shipping Climate Tracer seems to be a useful and efficient tool for the description and analysis of the shipping cycle as it offers a both reliable and differentiated representation of the current state of the shipping market and helps to detect major turning points in the shipping cycle. As proved in this study the Shipping Climate Tracer shows a very good correlation with the actual metadata regarding the turning points of the four stages of the shipping cycle.