Forecasting dry cargo hire rates and seasonality effects

One of the main transportation methods for global trade is Shipping with vessels. 90% of traded goods are carried over the seas. Therefore, Shipping business is one of the main pillars for economy and international transportation. Government policies, global economy, and seaborn trade are not easily predictable factors, and this makes shipping business very volatile and high risky. This high risk and volatility create a major problems and concern for investors at shipping business. Shipowners always look for a useful instrument to forecast the market levels. This helps them to move at the right time for optimizing the profit. Seasonality also another important element of maritime transportation when making decisions. Hence for several decades seasonality in Freight Market also has been investigated by scholars. The aim of this study, to understand the seasonality effect in the dry bulk ship market and to make future forecasts by examining the daily hire rate in the handy size dry cargo ship market between 2017-2021. Time series models for example Trend Analisis, Exponential Smoothing and ARIMA is employed to make the prediction. In this research, it is aimed to assist companies such as shipowners, charterers, operators, operating in the field of ship chartering etc. to determining the right time to charter in or out their vessels.