BulkVIX

The Market Problem

The dry bulk shipping market-handling over 5billions tons of cargo annually- is opaque, fragmented, and reactive. Traditional freight indices provide valuable benchmarks but are based on manually reported assessments, limiting real-time granularity and predictive capabilities. As a result, shipowners, operators, charterers and traders rely on subjective information, outdated assessments, and gut decisions to plan future voyages, optimize profitability, and hedge market risk.

Subjectivity & Lack of Transparency: Current freight indices are based on self-reported assessments rather than actual market transactions. This introduces bias, potential manipulation, and lacks an auditable methodology.

Limited Trade Route Coverage: Traditional indices are limited to predefined benchmark routes, failing to reflect new emerging trade lanes, shifting geopolitical factors, or dynamic supply-demand balances.

No supply-demand benchmark based on actual vessel behaviours: The market currently lacks a reliable supply-demand benchmark grounded in actual vessel behavior. Existing indices do not account for real-time fleet for real-time fleet activity such as utilization, routing patterns, or segment-specific deployment. That fails to reflect the true dynamics of vessel movement and capacity utilization across global trade lanes

No Predictive Capabilities: Current indices only reflect past transactions, offering no forward-looking guidance for shipowners, charterers, operators or FFA traders. Market participants rely on gut instinct rather than data-driven forecasting.

High Basis Risk in FFA Trading: Freight Forward Agreements (FFAs) are used for hedging and trading, but the high basis risk in traditional indices leading to misaligned hedging strategies. Tools do not reflect vessel heterogeneity.

Visibility into CO₂ emissions or CII ratings: Currently, there is no platform that provides visibility into CO₂ emissions or CII ratings based on specific vessel and route segments. Existing systems either generalize emissions data or lack integration with real-time vessel behavior, making it impossible to assess environmental performance at a granular level. This leaves shipowners, charterers, and regulators without the tools needed to benchmark eco-efficiency, ensure compliance, or make ESG-aligned commercial decisions across different vessel classes and trading routes.

A fundamental challenge is that the current shipping market is measured primarily as a derived demand of cargo trade. Traditional econometric models, heavily incorporate external variables like commodity volumes and GDP, overlooking shipping's internal dynamics. This dependency creates biases in volatile markets and limits the ability to isolate shipping as an independent ecosystem.

BulkVIX aims to achieve a breakthrough in econometrics by developing a cargo-independent model that focuses solely on shipping itself—using Satellite-derived metrics for a pure, internal equilibrium analysis.

BulkVIX addresses these challenges by creating an AI-powered intelligence and forecasting ecosystem, with different core services.

Real-Time Market Data Integration – Unlike static indices, our AI-based utility and volatility indices aggregates real-world transaction data, live satellite tracking, and global macroeconomic indicators to produce a real-time benchmark. An actual real time market benchmark reflecting bulk vessel movements, route usage and weightings, vessel utilization, and segment-specific congestion.

Machine Learning-Driven Rate Prediction – BulkVIX are trained by machine learning models providing AI driven forecasts of vessel tracking patterns, to predict volatility and advise for optimal repositioning advise 4-8 weeks ahead.

Dynamic Route Adjustments – Instead of relying on predefined benchmark routes, our AI identifies new, high-volume trade lanes in real-time, adapting as market conditions evolve.

Enhanced Transparency & Auditability – All indices generated by our AI-based platform are backed by traceable, data-driven calculations, eliminating panel-based bias and improving trust among market participants.

Satellite Driven Vessel Supply Analysis: Tracks real-time operational ratios, fleet congestion, and vessel repositioning trends, offering a more accurate measure of market conditions.

Predictive Freight Rate Modeling: Uses state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms (LSTM, XGBoost, Transformers) to anticipate market fluctuations before they occur, providing shipowners and traders a data-driven edge.

Automated Market Intelligence & Trade Optimization: AI detects supply-demand imbalances ahead of the market, alerting users to rate spikes, congestion surges, or emerging arbitrage opportunities

CO2 emissions /CII scoring : For investors and policy makers understanding vessel and route specific emission outputs

Scenario Analysis: Users can proactively evaluate how specific disruptions, like geopolitical conflicts, port strikes, or extreme weather events, will ripple through freight rates, fleet deployment, cargo availability, and overall market dynamics.

Recession Probability Index: By leveraging economic indicators and freight market signals, the platform can forecast the likelihood and timing of economic downturns. This function enables proactive asset management, strategic chartering decisions, and effective hedging in freight forward agreements (FFAs), significantly reducing financial vulnerabilities during periods of economic uncertainty.

Reliability Index: This index helps shippers, charterers, and operators benchmark performance, improve scheduling accuracy, optimize fleet utilization, and reduce contractual disputes. Improved reliability tracking directly translates to better customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, and more robust freight market positioning

The Market Problem

BulkVIX aims to achieve a breakthrough in econometrics by developing a cargo-independent model that focuses solely on shipping itself—using Satellite-derived metrics for a pure, internal equilibrium analysis.

BulkVIX addresses these challenges by creating an AI-powered intelligence and forecasting ecosystem, with different core services.

Shipping is no longer derived- It's decisive