The Harpex Index

The HARPEX Shipping Index is the container ship index of the ship brokers Harper Petersen & Co. It tracks the weekly container shipping rate changes in the time charter market for eight classes of all-container ships. The index was compiled in 2004, but by using a database of 10,000 records, can be calculated retrospectively back to 1986.You can track this index here:Link.

The HARPEX index is considered a suitable indicator of global economic fleet shipping activity since it tracks changes in freight rates for container ships over broad categories.So it provides an insight into the transport of a much wider base of commercial goods than commodities alone unlike the Baltic Dry Index .

HARPEX is regarded as a Current-Activity Indicator, because it measures and charts the changes in freight rates for container ships that typically carry a wide variety of finished goods from a multitude of sellers. These are factory output goods headed for retail markets, at the other end of the supply chain from the raw materials of the BDI.

Today,many analysts prefer to track the Harpex over the BDI or in addition to the BDI ,as the massive growth in demand for commodities from emerging countries,especially China from 2005 to 2008 led to a significant increase in capacity. as the number of ships built surged through until the 2010 crisis that resulted in a major change in supply from relatively inelastic to highly elastic.