In Like A Tiger…
In the opening of 2010, the freight market has acted like a tiger as the freight rates have surged across the board. Just a year ago, market fundamentals seemed far bleaker while tanker freight rates were hanging on, waiting for the proverbial “other shoe to drop.” A year ago, Poten & Partners conducted an open survey on the tanker and oil markets (In the Year of the Ox, January 23, 2009) to gather popular opinions on the upcoming year. At that time, expectations of mergers, acquisitions, and volatility were common themes. In practice, 2009 somehow seemed to fall short on those fronts. Read on to see how clairvoyant you were: