Dry bulk freight rates can feel random, but they move on a handful of identifiable drivers. Understanding them is the first step to anticipating rates rather than reacting to them.
The main drivers
- Demand — iron ore, coal and grain trade volumes and their tonne-mile distances.
- Supply — fleet size, newbuilding deliveries, scrapping and ballast positioning.
- Congestion — port queues that lock up effective capacity.
- Fuel — bunker prices feed straight into voyage economics and speed choices.
These signals interact with a lag, which is exactly what a time-series model is built to capture. NAVGreen fuses them into a single forward rate curve so you can act on the drivers before they show up in the index.