Hong Kong, 1 May 2024 - BANDS Financial and Linerlytica launch the first virtual container freight futures trading competition exclusively for companies and executives involved in container shipping's Asia-Europe route. The competition is open to 20 companies and 200 individuals in separate company and individual leagues. Contestants receive virtual money to trade CoFIF, and the 3 contestants from each league with the highest equity at the end of the 6-month competition period will win the 2024
Asia-North Europe CoFIF freight futures retreated sharply on 29 April on fears that ceasefire talks taking place in Egypt this week could drag down freight rates before the end of the year. Contracts for October 2024 (EC2410) were most badly hit, dropping to 2,169 after reaching a peak of 2,765 last week. The latest EC2410 futures remain on par with the current SCFIS at 2,175 points, with EC2406 and EC2408 contracts still trading at a significant premium to the current SCFIS spot rate index at 2
Speculative traders returned to the CoFIF market last week with average trading volumes doubling compared to the week before. Prices for longer dated contracts for June 2024 through February 2025 rallied. The EC2406 and EC2408 contracts rose above 2,500 compared to the latest SCFIS index at 2,135, implying an expected increase of over 17% from current rate levels. Market conviction on the May rate hikes have strengthened with several carriers pushing for higher FAK rates backed by improved vess
Asia-North Europe freight futures rallied on 15 April with longer dated CoFIF contracts (covering June 2024 to February 2025) recording strong double digit % gain. Traders are building long positions with the escalation in the Middle East conflict expected to extend the Suez diversions. The extended voyages have kept Asia-North Europe capacity in check, with effective capacity falling by 3% YoY in spite of the additional 23% capacity that has been deployed on the route. Although carriers failed
The Containerized Freight Index Futures (CoFIF) traded on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) is the second attempt by China to build its container freight futures market. Unlike its predecessor, called the Container Freight Derivatives (CFD) that was launched in June 2011 by the Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange Co., Ltd. (SSEFC) and only available to domestic on-shore traders, CoFIF is accessible to off-shore traders outside of China. Initial CFD trading saw high daily turnover
The longer dated CoFIF contracts rallied last week with traders building long positions after several carriers pushed for another Asia-Europe FAK rate hike in mid-April. Despite continued liquidation, prices for EC2404 contracts that will expire in 2 weeks were unchanged at 2,120 and remains slightly lower than the SCFIS rate at 2,174 last week (before settling slightly lower at 2,172 based on the latest assessment on 8 April). The latest CoFIF rates implies April-August rates that are equivale
Short covering on the first freight futures that will expire on 29 April kept EC2404 prices up, although futures contracts for rates expiring after April registered small declines. Traders liquidated another 37% of their positions to cut the open interests (OI) for EC2404 from 11,899 lots to 7,511 lots. The EC2404 open interest peaked at 134,537 on 22 Dec 2023 and has been sliding since then. At 7,511 lots, the open interests for EC2404 amounted to some $110m. Since only the losses/profits of th
CoFIF freight futures staged its first rebound since the end of 2023, with price, daily trading volumes and Open Interests rising in tandem. Last week’s buying interests in EC2404 for contracts expiring on 29 April were driven by both short covering and profit taking in response to the planned April rate hikes to Europe, with quoted rates already starting to tick up for the first time since January with various Asian carriers raising their spot rates from 3,000-3,100 per feu to $3,600 while the
Asia-Europe futures CoFIF prices stayed broadly unchanged for the past week on flat trading volumes with spot SCFIS rates dropping further on 18 March to 2,437 points to close the gap with current EC2404 futures which closed at 1,826 points. International Energy Exchange (INE), the exchange where CoFIF contracts are being traded, announced new measures to spur trading volumes after market close on 18 March for EC2406-EC2412: (1) drop the margin requirement from 22% to 18%, meaning for every dol
CoFIF trading volume slumped to a new low of 10,101 lots last Friday (9 March 2024) as speculative sentiment cooled. Based on an estimated ratio of one lot to 10 teu, the reduced CoFIF daily trading volumes still amounts to 100,000 teu, which provides significant market liquidity that matches the daily turnover of the dry bulk FFA which has a longer trading history. However, CoFIF is digitally traded as opposed to dry bulk FFAs that trade over-the-counter. Open interest, an indicator of traders