STOCK traders often brag about fresh 52-week highs. That’s nothing compared to what’s going on in shipping equities. Shipping stocks surged far beyond this threshold on Wednesday.

The stock of Danaos Corporation was at its highest point since 2008, before the global financial crisis. Frontline and Teekay Tankers hit their highest point in 15 years.

BW LPG traded at the highest price since it went public in 2013. Safe Bulkers hasn’t been at this level since 2014, Navios Partners since 2016, International Seaways since it went public a decade ago, Höegh Autoliners since it listed in 2021.

Star Bulk and Maersk were the highest on Wednesday since 2022, during the Covid boom. Dorian LPG and CMB.Tech hit two-year highs.

Several of these peaks relate to the Hormuz crisis, particularly for crude tanker and very large gas carrier owners, but the trend goes beyond Hormuz.

Hormuz crisis spot rate upside coincides with record Chinese auto exports supporting vehicle carriers, global landside capacity constraints hiking spot rates for container lines and charter rates for boxship tonnage providers, and ongoing industrial demand buoying dry bulk.

Shipping stocks fall within the category du jour, “HALO”: heavy assets, low obsolescence. The seaborne movement of physical goods can’t be easily AI’d out of existence.

Meanwhile, world trade and geopolitical relations are becoming increasingly fragmented and confrontational, allowing companies with shipping assets to capture extremely elastic freight-rate upside driven by trading inefficiencies.

The shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world seems more structural than transitory. More disruptions appear likely in the years ahead, and disruptions tend to push up shipping stock prices.

Stock price changes since Hormuz crisis began

Lloyd’s List looked at 35 shipping stocks listed in the US or Europe with market caps over $700m*, surveying the change in the adjusted closing prices over three different periods: since the start of the Hormuz crisis, year to date (YTD), and over the past year (y/y).

Segment-wide averages were weighted by market caps of individual stocks, and shipping stock moves were compared to a proxy of the broader US equity market, the SPDR exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 index.

Since the Hormuz crisis began, the market-cap-adjusted average gain of the 35 shipping stocks was 22%, well above SPDR’s gain of 13%.

Comparing the adjusted close on February 27 to Wednesday’s close, the top-performing shipping categories were car carriers (up 37%), gas carriers (up 30%) and crude tankers (up 28%).

The only two shipping categories to underperform SPDR during this stretch were product tankers (up 7%) and boxship lessors (up 3%).

Höegh Autoliners was the best-performing larger-cap shipping name in Western equity markets since February 27 (up 56%), followed by International Seaways (up 44%), Genco (up 44%), the two listed VLGC owners, Dorian LPG and BW LPG, up 41% and 37%, respectively, and Maersk, up 36%.

But all shipowner stock performance pales in comparison to gains of the Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET), which buys near-dated forward freight agreements, 90% weighted to TD3C Middle East Gulf-China very large crude carrier FFAs.

BWET exemplifies the term “off the charts” because if one included BWET’s gains in a chart, all the other entries look like they’ve flatlined. The price of the BWET ETF is up 650% since February 27.

Year-to-date performance

YTD performance only covers two additional months versus the Hormuz crisis performance, yet those two months, January and February, had a big effect, because tanker stock investors were bidding up prices in anticipation of the crisis. In fact, most of the YTD tanker stock gains came before the crisis.

The 35 surveyed shipping stocks are up 68% YTD, five times the SPDR gain of 13%.

All shipping segments handily outperformed the S&P 500 ETF since the beginning of the year, led by crude tankers (up 120%), car carriers (up 82%), gas carriers (up 78%), and dry bulk (up 71%).

Several shipowner shares have doubled or nearly doubled since the beginning of this year.

YTD gains in the adjusted closing price are led by Okeanis Eco Tankers (up 136%), Frontline (up 132%), International Seaways (up 131%), Dorian LPG (up 115%), Höegh Autoliners (up 111%) and CMB.Tech (up 99%).

And then there is BWET, which is up 2,194% YTD. A $10,000 investment in BWET on January 2 would be worth $229,445 today, less than eight months later.

One-year stock performance

Shipping stocks are often perceived as short-term momentum holdings, but the one-year performance data argues for more patience, particularly in light of the HALO thesis and the view that geopolitical chaos is likely to become more entrenched.

The 35 surveyed shipping stocks are up by a market-cap-adjusted average of 82% y/y, around quadruple the SPDR y/y gain of 22%.

The top y/y shipowner performers are all crude tanker owners: Okeanis (up 194%), International Seaways (up 171%), Nordic American Tankers (up 167%) and Frontline (up 159%).

The BWET tanker shipping ETF is up an astonishing 3,455% y/y. A $10,000 wager on BWET placed on August 19, 2025 would be worth $355,459 today.

* The 35 surveyed stocks are: Frontline, DHT, Okeanis Eco Tankers, International Seaways, Teekay Tankers, TEN and NAT (crude tankers); Scorpio, Ardmore, Hafnia, Torm, D’Amico (product tankers); Dorian LPG, BW LPG, Navigator, Flex LNG (gas shipping); Star Bulk, Genco, Himalaya, Safe Bulkers (dry bulk); Zim, Matson, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd (box lines); GSL, Costamare, MPC (boxship lessors); CMB.Tech, Navios Partners, SFL, CCEC, Danaos, Norden (multi-segment); Höegh Autoliners, Wallenius Wilhelmsen (car carriers).