US-listed dry bulk stocks were able to claw back much of the double-digit percentage losses seen in a 20 September meltdown over debt woes from Chinese property developer Evergrande.

On Friday, the dry group finished down an average 3% on the week, shipping's worst performance by sector, but this was after several major names lost between 10% and 15% of their share value on the Evergrande developments.

"Dry bulk spot rates increased across the board. To note, pretty much all of the week’s pullback was a result of the sharp selloff last Monday, when dry bulk stocks were down 10-15% in a single day, before recovering throughout the week," said Jefferies lead shipping analyst Randy Giveans.

Giveans has maintained that there is still no reason within the fundamentals of a strong dry bulk market to warrant such a selloff, despite understandable jitters over the developments.

"Last week, Chinese iron ore prices remained stable and Capesize spot rates increased more than 15% to above $61,000/day despite market volatility and fears around Evergrande missing its payment deadline of $83.5m in dollar bond interest," Giveans told TradeWinds.

"Although there is risk of an Evergrande default, regulators are working with local officials to ensure social and economic stability, and China's central bank injected cash into the financial system on Friday to support the market."

Last week's sell-off may have presented a buying opportunity, Giveans suggested, even if a market seeing its best hire rates in more than 10 years is not ultimately sustainable.

"Looking at the dry bulk FFA [forward freight agreement] curve, everyone expects rates to soften from these decade high levels, but we think the rate decline will be slower and less severe than many are fearing. Hence, we remain bullish on dry bulk equities at these discounted levels," Giveans said.

Overall, the 29 shipping stocks under Jefferies' coverage gained 0.5% on the week, exactly in line with both the S&P 500 and the small-cap Russell 2000 index. The Jefferies Shipping Index is up 67.4% year to date 66.3% year over year.

The other operating sector enjoying record rates, containerships, also managed to lose 2% on the week, perhaps also feeling the Evergrande jitters.

On the company basis, the week's bottom three performers came from the two dry sectors, with Diana Shipping down 10.4%, Genco Shipping & Trading off 7.5% and Israeli liner operator Zim shedding 4.6%.

The week's best news came in tankers, where owners gained an average 5% as rates showed improvement. LNG shipowners climbed 1% as LPG shipping companies weakened 2%.