Note: This article was originally published August 20th on Value Investor's Edge, a Seeking Alpha subscription service.
Overview
Spring and Summer of 2018 marked the low point in the latest crude and product tanker down cycle. 2019 has shown solid year over year improvements across all major crude tanker classes.
The cause for the most recent downturn, an acute oversupply of vessels, has been corrected. As deliveries have slowed, that excess capacity has been absorbed by the market and a thin orderbook (lack of newbuild orders) is paving the way for a much tighter