Capesize rates ended its losing streaks and booked slight gains with improvement of shipping demands in both basins.
The Capesize 5 time charter average went up $252 day-on-day to $24,639 on Thursday, as the Australian miners returned to the spot market.
Given the Capesize uptick, the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) inched up slightly by 0.18% day-on-day to 1,699 readings on Thursday.
Improvement in the Pacific
There was more optimism in the Pacific market, with hints of a more active coal shipping activities from the east coast of Australia.
This was due to talk of some relaxation of coal import quotas among Chinese ports, that allowed the freight market not to be over dependent by moving iron ore out of the west coast of Australia.
In the Atlantic market, there was a wide bid-offer gap, as shipping bids did not catch up on current cargoes, while the north Atlantic seemed to be tight on the tonnage list.
Bunker prices slide amid OPEC + relaxation of output cut
VLSFO prices reversed into a slight dip after a choppy session as it slid by $1/mt to $336/mt at the port of Singapore.
The decline followed on OPEC + to boost productions or relax output cuts by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 7.7 million bpd from August till December 2020.
This resulted in falling crude price movement as Brent Crude fell toward the $42 per barrel, while the WTI Crude lost ground and headed toward the $40 per barrel level.