Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Understanding The Fundamentals Of Freight Markets Volatility, Kian Guan Lim, Nikos K. Nomikos, Nelson Yap

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyse empirically the drivers of freight market volatility. We use several macroeconomic and shipping-related factors that are known to affect the supply and demand for shipping and examine their impact on the term structure of freight options implied volatilities (IV). We find that the level of IVs is affected by the level of the spot rate, the slope of the forward curve, as well as by both demand and supply factors, especially the former. We demonstrate that the relation between the volatility of futures prices and the slope of the forward curve is non-monotonic and convex, that is, it …