For dry bulk shipping, Q3 is typically the strongest quarter, or a very strong quarter in the cycle. In 2023, Q3 has been a profitable, but not particularly, strong. Fast forward to the last week in October, and things started to shift.
November 2023, an even strong shift - doubling during the month.
Advice to self and others - if one can’t decide on individual shipping names, just grab some shares of an ETF that attempts to map BDI e.g. Breakwaves’ BDRY. I don’t think any of the individual dry bulk shippers managed what BDRY did.in November 2023
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12/01
Realized some gains on the BDRY bet. It helps mitigate the impact of closing out another dry bulk shipping trade i.e. Star Bulk Carriers (SBLK) [in good company, even Oaktree Capital messed up SBLK 
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What happened to SBLK? Is there any hope?
JimA
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@JimA759s - I underestimated SBLK management’s capabilities. The company agreed to buy back shares from its previously largest shareholder, Oaktree Capital. The deal was announced in two steps - a 10M share buy-back in Sept 2023, then a second 10M shares in Oct 2023. Cash on the books when the first announcement was made suggested the first buy-back was quite doable.
The second buy-back? SBLK just sold off a bunch of vessels with low debt, plus re-arranged their existing financing a little, sold some shares, and that should took care of the second buy-back. I really did not expect them to complete the second buy-back so quickly. I figured the second buy-back would take at least Q4 2023 to sort out, and was prepared to wait till Q1 2024 to revisit.
Then this month long event I am calling “BDI bounce” happened. If you look at a SBLK chart, the share price did not react a lot the the first few weeks. Then around Nov 21st, shares start moving upward.
SBLK is a well managed company. I don’t think their management team, or Oaktree Capital, or I, could have predicted that Nov 2023 was going to be a good month for BDI.
It is somewhat copacetic- folks associated with the maritime sector use Forward Freight Agreements (FFAs) for hedging. I believe BDRY is mostly multiple purchases of FFAs that get recycled. While I had not gone into the transaction thinking of it as hedge, my BDRY purchase in June 2023 worked fantastic as a hedge. I closed out of my SBLK position because I saw risk on the horizon, and got bailed out by the BDRY stake.