CT Programmer

Will All Shipping Companies Suffer Equally?

I'm not saying things look rosy for shipping in the short term, but I will say this... Forbes must have a columnist dedicated to shipping, because it seems that I'm reading this "week-by-week" drop in the Baltic all the time from a Forbes article. Not trying to shoot the messenger, but when Cramer gets on and hypes a company I tend to listen very skeptically. I am now doing the same when Forbes pumps out their doom and gloom articles on shipping.

Looking Good: Genco in Particular, Shipping in General

You can pretty much count on reductions in dividends. Many of these guys are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and the next year or two will be a period of washing out the weak. But I do agree that Genco is in a good position compared to the others. It has been riding a wave of 90%+ contracted fleet, and even though they recently wrote down $23M for the forfeited deposit on a fleet of new ships that they canceled, at least they bit the bullet, did it early, and kept losses at a minimum. When a bunch of the others go out of business and shipping picks up (which it will) they'll be in a very good position. But I agree with oneslip that there's no rush to buy, unless you want to just sit on the dividends (my guess is they'll cut those back to the 10% range to reflect the new stock prices). The price can ALWAYS go down, no matter how ridiculously low it is now. They MAY have bottomed, but my guess is they'll be hovering here for a while anyway.