This at least is predictable: we start the new year with ambition and enthusiasm for new business with fresh energy only to be kicked in the teeth after a couple of weeks. For dry bulk shipping, what makes it worse is that we all expected 2022 to be a great year. True, most of us…

Yes, it’s that time of year again. If you have made New Year Resolutions, good for you. If you have managed to keep them all so far, even better. If, like me, you don’t, whether from old age, cynicism, or from bitter experience, it may be, like me, that you consider the whole exercise pointless.…

If I had told you this time last year that dry bulk freight rates would be twice to three times higher, and people would still be complaining because the market had fallen you would not have believed me. If I had told you that container shipping would be in the spotlight, not only because of…

The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is a region of the brain, behind the eyes and near the top of the spinal cord, that plays an extremely important role in how human beings function and behave. Although work is still continuing – the brain is a complex and powerful organ after all – many neuroscientists believe…

It is a dream of many people to find a solution to a problem that no-one else has found before. This is a dream that goes way back, probably to the dawn of spoken language between the first humans. In some cases this is driven by ambition, or by a noble desire to make the…

How important is coffee in your life? Are you just a one coffee a day person, or can you not function without an injection of caffeine in the morning? Or have you foregone the demon drink altogether and moved towards teas of various description? Coffee has become the absolute drink of choice for many of…

The world is a very complex place. For those who think otherwise consider the case of fertilisers, an essential component of efficient agriculture, improving yields, and increasing productivity. Most industrially produced fertiliser is nitrogen based, and this requires ammonia. Most ammonia is made using natural gas. The price of ammonia roughly tripled in Europe between…

I had a sinking feeling yesterday morning as I read about the new B.1.1.529 COVID strain. We will have to see how dangerous and infectious it is, but the signs are bad, and the financial markets reacted accordingly and fled to safe havens, the money equivalent of pulling the duvet over your head and hoping…

I was somewhat surprised to see an article called Pre-sale vessel inspections put S&P in the clear in Splash 24/7 by Campbell Johnston Clark (CJC) directors Jonathan Campbell and James Clayton, and associate Francesca Norman – with help from inspection company Idwal – saying that up to a “one third of transactions now make use…

If you want an alternative take on why the shipping market is so poor in China and the Pacific in general, then I might have one. It has little to do with blue sky time during the forthcoming Winter Olympics, or Evergrande and the housing market, or even trade relations between China and the rest…