MARKET volatility is not necessarily a bad thing — but it is not necessarily a good thing either, says Veson Nautical’s Chief Operating Officer Sean Riley in this edition of Lloyd’s List’s sponsored podcasts. “It’s just a thing” and what matters for a business is being prepared for volatility by being set up to be able to make money whatever rates do, he said. And for some — especially traders — “volatility is their friend”.

Volatility is driven by uncertainty, and there is a lot of that in the market at the moment, he said, sparked by variables including regulatory, geopolitical and environmental developments. There is no common view on how those affect freight rates, which “creates [an] opportunity for our clients to stake their position in the market”.

In his remarks, he warns listeners about the risk of simply reacting to market developments and offers some advice about how to avoid that situation by planning ahead, for example by considering the potential impact on a company’s operations on regulatory decisions.

When the podcast was recorded in late September 2025, IMO was due to be taking decisions shortly after that could have an impact on the organisation’s ambitions for shipping to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Riley said that shipowners should consider that decision and take a view on whether an eco-ship would be more or less valuable in the market as a result.

He cited a number of other areas of business that are affected by regulatory changes but did not call for shipping to be less regulated as a result. Instead, he referred to a comparison made by the Harvard Business Review, which distinguished between a “storm” of individual regulatory changes and a “climate” created by a sustained pattern of those storms. “That’s the climate that we live in today,” he said.

One contributor to that climate is the US opposition to IMO’s environmental policies, he said, but drew attention to other factors, such as the EU’s more pro-environmental agenda. During the podcast, he sets out his thoughts on whether these — coupled with the unprecedented range of sanctions and tariffs currently affecting global trade — will have long- or short-term consequences for freight markets.

On top of these influences, geopolitical events — including terrorist attacks on shipping — will have an impact of market volatility, but these influences can be analysed and understood with the right software tools and data sources, Riley believes. He said that this is how other sectors — he mentioned the equity markets — operate, using large volumes of data to guide their decision-making.

Shipping companies are increasingly following that lead, but it can be hard to use such large amounts of information, thanks in part to a lack of standardisation for data, Riley suggested. This will continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future, he added, saying that technology — particularly AI — “is helping to bridge some of that gap for our clients”.