Supramax Bulk Carrier Market Forecasting with Technical Indicators and Neural Networks

Supramax bulk carriers cover a wide range of ocean transportation requirements, from major to minor bulk cargoes. Market forecasting for this segment has posed a challenge to researchers, due to complexity involved, on the demand side of the forecasting model. This paper addresses this issue by using technical indicators as input features, instead of complicated supply-demand variables. Artificial neural networks (ANN), one of the most popular machine-learning tools, were used to replace classical time-series models. Results revealed that ANN outperformed the benchmark binomial logistic regression model, and predicted direction of the spot market with more than 70% accuracy. Results obtained in this paper, can enable chartering desks to make better short-term chartering decisions.