The interaction between Forward Freight Agreements & Spot Freight Rates
Master Thesis
Author
Χατζηδημητρίου - Ζουμή, Χριστίνα
Chatzidimitriou Zoumi, Christina
Date
2021-02View/ Open
Keywords
Forward Freight Agreements ; Shipping ; Derivatives ; Hedging ; Freight ; Regression ; Cointegration ; Heteroscedasticity ; Homoscedasticity ; UnbiasednessAbstract
Shipping Industry along with relevant freight markets are characterized by extreme volatility. For this reason, hedging tools might be vital for companies involved and their business activities.
The Forward Freight Agreements are financial forward contracts that can be used as hedging or speculation tools for principals involved in ship chartering and commodity trading, such as shipowners and charterers. However, given the fact that freight rates regulate the industry, companies invest in market analysis in order to estimate future freight market activity. In addition, relevant analysis has attracted the interest of several researchers, who have also attempted to study the relation of the FFAs with the Spot Freight Rates. The present thesis deals with the interaction of Forward Freight Agreements with the Spot Freight Rates for five sea routes of Panamax dry cargo vessels. We study whether FFAs prices with specific maturity can be used as unbiased estimators of spot prices in short term period.
The study is based in some tools of econometrics and data series analysis and the methodology is based on the published study of Professor, Mr. Ε. Kavussanos in 2004 with similar hypothesis.
Considering the final results, there is a strong evidence that FFAs prices can be used as unbiased estimators for Spot Prices. However, the opposite relationship cannot be ascertained.