How the shipping industry is riding the cheaper oil price wave

Jamie Carter, manager of the SWMC Small Cap European fund, says the shipping sector, and more specifically the oil tanker market, has become a surprise success story of fluctuating oil prices in recent years

Global trade is, put simply, totally dependent on the shipping industry. Shipping is almost incomprehensibly vast and covers a myriad of sins. Just about everything is transported by sea, and there are at least 20 million containers crossing the world at this very moment.  Though each sub-sector has its own very specific drivers, there are, however, many common threads. At its most basic the cycle is led by economics lesson one, supply and demand; how much paraphernalia there is to be moved (and how far) set against how many ships there are around that can do it. This drives the ra...