The Baltic Dry Index closed the week at 3,507, down 3.3% from last Monday, and the headline number undersells what actually happened. Capesize spent Monday to Wednesday climbing toward $55,139/day on the C5TC, a level not seen since October 2021, before giving back most of that gain into Friday. That’s not a reversal. It’s a high plateau settling after a sharp run, and the TCE is still sitting comfortably above where Cape traded for most of the summer. Panamax barely moved. The more interesting story sat one size class down: Supramax and Handysize rose through every single session this week, with Handysize up nearly 5% since Monday and its TCE climbing to $16,925/day. That pattern points to Atlantic tonnage tightening, likely tied to the grain and fertilizer season, though we’d want another week of data before calling it confirmed rather than seasonal noise.

Bunker tells a different story than freight this week. VLSFO rose across all three major hubs on Friday — Singapore, Rotterdam and Fujairah all up together — which usually means something structural rather than local. Two things are feeding it: a pipeline fault in Saudi Arabia threatening roughly 4% of global oil supply, and a jump in diesel prices after refinery strikes in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Brent itself actually fell nearly 3% on the week to $104.61, so the crude benchmark and the bunker price are pulling in opposite directions right now — worth watching rather than treating as resolved.

The other thread worth carrying into this week: Hormuz uncertainty is back on Capesize desks’ radar, according to weekly commentary, without any actual disruption on the water yet. That’s a risk premium being priced ahead of an event, not in response to one. For this week, the two things we’re watching are whether Cape settles back into the $54-55k band or keeps correcting toward $50k, and whether the Supramax/Handysize strength holds into a second week or was a one-off.

Sources: handybulk.com/baltic-dry-index, bunkerindex.com, Hellenic Shipping News (Reuters, Xclusiv Weekly), gCaptain (Reuters, Bloomberg).