It was a sea of red ink for New York-listed shipping stocks Thursday as Wall Street suffered its worst day since the middle of March, plunging 1,861 points or 6.9%.
The slide was viewed as a correction of a market rally that had run ahead of actual economic fundamentals.
In particular, investors appeared to react to Wednesday statements by US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that that labour market could take years to recover for the virus outbreak. This was seen as dampening hopes of a so-called V-shaped recovery.
A second deterrent came in new spikes in Covid-19 cases in several US states, most in the South and Southwest.
For shipping, the losses were sharp in several cases and seemingly indiscriminate.
The day's biggest loser was a tanker company, Tsakos Energy Navigation, at a 16% drop, and there was at least some rationale as it had reported a significant miss on first-quarter earnings earlier in the day.
But the second biggest was a dry bulk owner, Eagle Bulk Shipping, at 15%, with no particular news surrounding the company. Eagle shares had performed well in recent weeks and may have been poised for some retrenchment, but it had plenty of company.
Diana Shipping of Greece fell 10%, New York's Genco Shipping & Trading dipped 9% and the dry sector's largest owner, Star Bulk Carriers of Greece, stumbled 7%.
Meanwhile, Scorpio Bulkers shed 5%, pushing the owner back below the $18.64 deal price on a secondary shares sale earlier this week. Scorpio closed at $17.77.
The tanker side was equally ugly, as Irish product tanker owner Ardmore plummeted 12%, retail investor darling Nordic American Tankers 10%, Frontline Ltd 9% and Diamond S Shipping 8%. Product tanker giant Scorpio Tankers and mixed-fleet owner International Seaways both shed 7%.
It was more of the same in containerships, where Global Ship Lease led with an 11% flop. Danaos Corp and Costamare lost 10% and 7%, respectively.
It was even worse for the cruise sector. Norwegian Cruise Line was worst with a 16% drop, followed by Carnival Corp at 15% and Royal Caribbean at 14%.
The fall in the down brought the key index from above 27,000 to 25,128. The S&P 500 tumbled 5.9% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 5.3%.
