Transpacific Peaks, Demand Splits, Middle East Risks Mount

We've got an interesting podcast today.

We're going to start, as always, I think, with the rates.

We're going to talk demand as well.

Some quite a lot of information to unpack there.

Really kind of mixed picture.

I've got some carrier results.

Of course, we've got an update on the Middle East as well.

And yeah, plenty, plenty to discuss today.

So Lars, where should we begin?

Let's begin where we usually begin, on the Trans-Pacific, and look at what are the NIFI rates doing there.

Because if we look at the overall Pacific rates on Asia 2 and the US West Coast, what we will see here is that on the West Coast rates, it seems we might actually have peak.

There's a slight abatement here.

over the past week.

We could then consider, is that happening on the U.S. East Coast as well? Actually, if we pull up the U.S.

East Coast for comparison here, we can see that U.S. East Coast continue to increase ever so slightly.

It does appear, if you look in the wider market, that this might actually be the people we have seen.

I think we need to remind everyone again, what the NIFA measures is rates for cargo that's actually been loaded on board the ships, whereas there's a plethora of other indices out there that mainly lean towards measuring at the loading stage.

And of course, you quote rates several weeks before cargo ever gets loaded.

And these quoted indices have also shown a peak and are now going down on the Trans-Pacific.

So this is what's coming through here as well.

The unusually strong rally leading up to Golden Week is basically over as far as it seems.

I don't

think there's much reason in pulling up the futures.

We do that sometimes.

But basically, the overall futures outlook is unchanged compared to last week in broad strokes, which again also tallies pretty well with it appears that stakeholders last week had taken stock of the situation, had taken stock of we are likely reaching the peak.