Posidonia 2026: shipping’s new currency is not freight. It is resilience
The industry has a new consensus word. What nobody is saying out loud is what it costs — and who pays when freight rates can no longer carry the weight
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STRAIT OF HORMUZ
Decks and Deals Weekly #45
Between 24 and 31 May 2026, global shipping markets ran on contradiction: a peace deal nobody signed, a VLCC war premium in freefall, a BDI rebound nobody expected, and asset prices that simply refused to care
Hormuz closed. Frankfurt tightens. Who pays the ECB rate hike bill?
Yannis Stournaras says he wishes the ECB did not have to act. It probably will anyway — and European shipping will absorb costs it neither created nor controls
Q1 2026 container shipping Part II: ZIM and CMA CGM close the structural case
ZIM lost $86 million. CMA CGM lost three-quarters of its net income. The Q1 2026 container shipping season has closed, and the two final reports confirm Part I’s diagnosis
Fleets change routes, insurers cut cover and war risk premiums surge
Shipping companies, insurers and energy traders are already changing operational behaviour as Middle East tensions disrupt routes, tighten insurance conditions and increase costs across the global maritime system, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea
Trump–Xi summit: no news is big news — and why Thucydides was never the trapper
The Trump–Xi summit became historic precisely because almost nothing happened, exposing a transformed balance of power and challenging the increasingly ritualistic misuse of the so-called “Thucydides Trap”
Q1 2026 container shipping: volumes return, pricing power does not
The Q1 2026 container shipping season produced one verdict. Volumes returned. Pricing power did not. The Strait of Hormuz has been quietly turned into a line item
The strait that taught the markets to fear shadows
The Strait of Hormuz no longer shapes markets through disruption alone. It shapes them through anticipation, hesitation, memory, and the rising global cost of uncertainty
From Hormuz to Lamu: the fragile rise of African ports
A car carrier unloads 469 vehicles at Lamu, a port that barely functioned a year ago. The Iran war has placed African ports at the centre of a reshuffled global trade map
Decks and Deals Weekly #40
The period 20–25 April 2026 produced the most intense maritime standoff since the tanker wars of the 1980s: the Hormuz blockade turned fully kinetic, Brent crossed $100, and six vessels were seized