“Sounds like a buying opportunity to me.” Thus spoke one shipping veteran of five decades when recently discussing an analyst’s prediction that the capesize bulker spot market may just meet operating costs until the end of 2025. Judging by the number of potential buyers who are expressing interest in the ships which are coming onto the sale and purchase market, others share his upbeat view, and it’s not all doom and gloom amongst those who have been around for a while.

Eternal optimism is a quality shipowners are either blessed or cursed with, depending on your perspective. As VLCC rates edged towards $70,000 a day in September bringing a brutal run to an end, it was certainly a relief to the owners who had looked on enviously whilst their bulk carrier owning colleagues had reaped the benefits of a solid couple of years. We are approaching the anniversary of capesize rates hitting close to $87,000 per day just 12 months ago.

Since then, it’s been a mixed ride for the big bulkers. Pre-Posidonia, they were enjoying a close to $40,000 per day market, although by the time the clinking of champagne glasses ended in Greece, $20,000 was the benchmark. The return from summer holidays was met with a $2,500 market which no doubt prompted a few bankers’ sun tans to quickly fade, but a more than six-fold increase since then has given hope that even with so much bad news on the economic and political fronts, shipping will pull through as it always does, eventually.

That belief that markets will ultimately turn around is based on decades of hard-earned experience. It’s hard to believe that those who entered shipping at the start of the great recession of the 1980s are now beginning to look towards the end of their careers. For those lucky enough to have enjoyed more than four decades in this game, they can look back on a rollercoaster ride few other industries can come close to emulating. Hopefully, in addition to witnessing such game changers as OPA 90, the emergence of China’s dominant role in shipping and at least a dozen other events that caused markets to rise and fall, those 40-year plus veterans managed to make a reasonable living. No matter the state of their bank balance when they do leave this industry (if they can drag themselves away from it), their wealth of war stories will largely focus on how they rode the uncertainty, volatility and unpredictability that makes shipping so attractive to some and prompts others to run a mile. You don’t find many actuaries becoming shipowners.

It is unlikely that many new industries will emerge that can match the excitement that shipping’s violent cycles can produce. The financial media has recently been running stories bemoaning the fact that there have been less tech IPOs this year than at any time since the global financial crisis. The head of tech equity capital markets at a leading investment bank was quoted as saying: “Uncertainty is the enemy of the IPO market.” Uncertainty the enemy? Hardly the case for shipping. It’s what we thrive on. Perhaps the investor who sees that gloomy analyst’s prediction on the capesize market as a buying opportunity will be proved right. History suggests he may well be.