Are freight futures markets efficient? Evidence from IMAREX

The International Maritime Exchange (IMAREX) is the leading regulated marketplace for trading and clearing shipping freight derivatives. We investigate for the first time whether the IMAREX freight futures market is efficient over the daily and weekly horizons. To this end, we address the question in both a statistical setting and an economic setting by employing an extensive dataset of freight futures prices. In the statistical setting, we form both point and interval forecasts using alternative models, and evaluate them using a number of statistical tests. We assess the economic significance of the obtained forecasts by means of trading strategies, taking into account the presence of transactions costs. We find that IMAREX is not efficient over the shorter daily horizon. The results have implications for the economics of freight futures markets and the pricing of freight derivatives.