New indices to cover maritime shipping sector
Capital Link Shipping, a New York based investor relations and advisory firm, this week announced the launching of a set of indices to track the different classes of shipping stocks. Here is a listing of the new indices:
- Capital Link Maritime Index
- Capital Link Tanker Index
- Capital Link Drybulk Index
- Capital Link Container Index
- Capital Link LNG/LPG Index
- Capital Link Mixed Fleet Index
- Capital Link MLP Index
The components of the indices all trade on the U.S. stock exchanges. Component values in the indices will be market cap weighted and updated at the end of each trading day.
I think these indices will be a great tool for investors. Until this development the most used source of shipping information were the Baltic indices. These are shipping cost trackers and their results on the Baltic exchange do not always translate to shipping stock values.
Investors and financial commentators have a tendency to lump all shipping stocks together and it is a nice feature to see the breakdown of the sector into smaller sectors. What happens in the tanker business may be completely different than the factors affecting dry bulk or containers. Now you can see how the different sub-sectors are faring.
If like I am, you are interested in income stocks please note the MLP Index. While most off the indexes listed above are in negative territory for 2009, The CL MLP index is up 29% for the first half of 2009.
I will close with some good links about the indices:
- Closing values: www.maritimeindices.com
- Index components
- Capital Link Shipping
New Indices for Maritime Stocks
There is a new set of indices following the shipping sector. I have an in depth article over at my other site: The Shipping Stocks Blog. If you haven’t visited my other site yet, go on over and check it out. Sign up for an email or RSS feed while you are there.
Mid Year 2009: MarketWatch admits failure
Our 2009 investing ideas at midyear: Oops - MarketWatch.
After four months of taking somewhat of a break from writing here I am ready to start the 2nd half of 2009 focusing on investing and making money. We will start out with a some analysis of the self-analysis from MarketWatch.com linked above. The financial website recommended 10 investment ideas at the beginning of the year and now they are admitting that their recommendations were not so hot.
Although they do not give much in the way of real number returns it seems that MarketWatch had one winner out of their 10 suggestions: Consumer Staples stocks, and one that did OK: Investment Grade Corporate Bonds. Reading between the lines, it seems the other 8 suggestions have not done well so far in 2009.
It is nice to see the “professionals” admit their lack of foresight and the year is only half over, so their predictions may recover. The article is mostly how that could happen. Here is the original article so you can check for yourself at the end of 2009.
I point this stuff out because I will be trying to give real recommendations on this site and following up with how well they perform in real numbers. I have learned a lot in the two years (site birthday next week) I have been writing here and hopefully it will translate into interesting and useful information for the readers.
What will start a housing recovery?
OK, I am about done discussing housing and real estate until the June numbers start to come out. I just found this article through the Sacramento Bee Real Estate blog and wanted to highlight a couple of points. The information in the article is from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. A couple of lines caught my eye and I wanted to comment.
First on possibilities of a housing recovery:
Any talk of a housing recovery is moot until foreclosed inventory shrinks, unemployment rates abate and banks make mortgages available for more buyers.
So if house prices do start to recover under current conditions, what will happen when these events actually occur?
Using the reports most pessimistic estimate of household growth the U.S. population will ad 12.5 million households from 2010 until 2020. That looks like 1.25 million per year to me and the homebuilders are continuing to churn out homes at a 500k per year rate.
The reason why the Joint Center doesn’t think less immigration would result in even lower household formation is because of its expectation that buyer demand among the Echo Boom generation—which is five million people larger than the Baby Boomers—will be high enough to drive the housing industry’s growth “for the next 10 years.” (emphasis added)
So if the bankers can control the amount of foreclosed properties they send into the market. And, believe it or not, they seem to be trying to do that. And if the federal government can keep mortgage rates near or under 5%: They control Freddie and Fannie, why wouldn’t they? 2009 may be the bottom in the current housing cycle.
Existing home sales gain in May
Here are my quick thoughts on the National Association of Realtors existing home sales report for May. First, the numbers showed small but positive gains from April. Second, the national mean and median prices increased for the first time in a year. Here are the numbers:
- May seasonally adjusted housing sales vs. April: +2.4%
- May non-adjusted sales vs. April: +9.2%
- Months inventory supply, May vs. April: -5.0%
- May median sales price vs. April: +3.8%
- Mean sales price change, May vs. April: +3.2%
Adjusted sales numbers for May were still 2.9% the total for 2008, but marks the 3rd increase month-over-month out of the last 4 months. The report shows the median sales price in the west fell by 3.2% vs. April but this is an improvement compared to the March to April decline of 10.2%. I have written earlier about the positive price numbers for May in California.
I often say the one month does not a trend make, so we will not read to much into these numbers. Nest month, maybe.
