Tanker stocks sink to pre-conflict levels despite continued spot rate strength
- Spot rate indexes for voyages from the Middle East Gulf fell by 5%-9% on Tuesday, however they are still more than double pre-conflict levels
- One index — for Middle East Gulf-Singapore VLCC voyages — bucked the trend and continued to rise; it jumped 22% on Tuesday to $89,573 per day
- Shares of VLCC owners and product tanker owners have shed all of their conflict-driven gains; the stock market is pricing in a return to normalcy with no disruption in the Strait of Hormuz
Shares of tanker stocks have now done a ‘round trip’. They’re all the way back to where they started, prior to the attacks on Iran. But tankers trading in the Middle East Gulf are still garnering a risk premium, so recent freight-rate gains will take longer to unwind
