Terence,

Thank you for the daily update. Appreciates.

Just to elaborate on Fairygal's explanation on the shipping industry. Ships today are quite specialised and can be broadly categorised into containers, bulk carriers and tankers. The first two have been covered by Fairygal.....tankers are basically liquid carriers....usually crude oil. Of course, there are other very specialised ships like RoRo (roll on roll off car carriers)....e.g Spore Ship.; and LNG carriers..which we will not cover here.

Shipping companies have different modes of earning their revenues.

Usually the larger, more established companies run 'liners' or long term charters (rental). Liners are usually containers carriers......they run a certain route on some fixed schedule and they pick up and drop off cargos at the ports of call (like SMRT buses picking up/dropping off passengers) .....eg of container liner operator is NOL. Some ship owners charter (rent out) their ships on long term (anywhere from 1-10 years). The charter rates are usually fixed.....both containers and bulk carrier owners practice this.

Then there are the 'spot' charters....where rates are negotiated voyage by voyage. A good example of this is Courage Marine (operating only bulk carriers)......where most of their revenues are from 'spot'.....So, CM's fortunes are very dependant on the fluctuations of BDI.

This brief explanation is by no means comprehensive, but hope it clarifies matter abit more.