The Baltic Dry Rally Begins

• By the tickerspy.com Staff
• On 12:33 pm EDT, Wednesday October 7, 2009

At the end of September a shipping expert forecast an 80% rally in the dry bulk benchmark, and so far October has been a strong month.

Post-recession demand concerns have weighed on the dry bulk shipping sector throughout 2009, but October's advance of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) suggests a rebound may be in store. According to Bloomberg the Index, which tracks raw material shipping rates, is on its best run since mid-July, and yesterday's over 3% jump is helping dry bulk stocks across the board.

As a whole, the Dry Bulk Shipping Stocks Index is up by 2% today, though it remains mixed over the last week.

The day's top performers, Dryships (NASDAQ: DRYS - News), Genco Shipping & Trading (NYSE: GNK - News), Eagle Bulk Shipping (NASDAQ: EGLE - News), and Excel Maritime (NYSE: EXM - News) are all adding more than 2% in the session.

Diana Shipping (NYSE: DSX - News) is the leading component over the last week with a 7% gain. Meanwhile, Kirby (NYSE: KEX - News), the sector's largest U.S.-listed player, is among the worst performers for the period, down by -5%.

If the bold BDI forecast from Chinese shipper Cosco proves to be accurate, more gains could be in store for shipping stocks. That would be welcome news for Euroseas (NASDAQ: ESE - News), Omega Navigation Enterprises (NASDAQ: ONAV - News), and Oceanfreight (NASDAQ: OCNF - News), all of which have slipped over the last month.

As of this writing, the Dry Bulk Shipping Stocks Index is ranked in the top-40 tickerspy Indexes by dividend yield with an average of 2.3%.

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