Joakim Hannisdahl says a VLCC trading oil out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz can now earn close to $800,000 a day, against roughly $200,000 to $300,000 sailing the safer route from the US Gulf.
Every other shipping cycle has a story about supply and demand. This one, Hannisdahl told George Noble, is a story about inefficiency: closed straits, sanctioned fleets, and rerouted trade all stacking bullish cash flows on top of each other at once, with no way to know when peace breaks the pattern.
"Right now, every scenario is as plausible as any else."
Hannisdahl runs the Gersemi Shipping Fund, having spent his career as a shipping research analyst and broker at Cleaves Securities in Oslo before starting his own fund; he has just added a second, separate fund trading crypto with an in-house algorithm.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 53 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of reading.
Here are the 12 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Joakim Hannisdahl, founder of the Gersemi Shipping Fund and formerly a shipping analyst at Cleaves Securities in Oslo
🎙️ Host: George Noble, managing partner of Noble Capital Advisors and author of the Noble Update newsletter, who says he has followed shipping stocks himself for 40 years
📰 Published: 10 September 2026, on YouTube
🔴 YouTube | ⏱️ 53 min | ✅ Time saved: 41 min
Key Takeaways
A VLCC sailing through the Strait of Hormuz can earn close to $800,000 a day, versus $200,000-$300,000 from the US Gulf
A prompt-delivery VLCC resold for a rumored $200 million, against roughly $82-84 million a few years ago
Tankers are at peak cycle stacked on peak cycle: peak earnings and peak asset values at once
LNG is the one major segment sitting at trough cycle instead
New-build math argues against ordering a VLCC today, even at today's cash flows
Parity earnings run around $42,000 a day against a roughly $131 million Chinese-built price
He is neutral on tankers, not short, purely because the cash flows are too large to fight
The fund is doing short-term trading around the spot market instead of taking a directional view
US retail and generalist investors are now the marginal buyer of tanker equities, chasing yield and afraid of missing out
If he ran a diversified shipping company, the prudent move would be to sell the fleet and return the capital — but the same call 10 months ago would have missed the entire rally
Bulk carriers are firing on all cylinders, and China, at roughly 40% of ton-mile demand, is the swing factor for where it goes next
LNG carriers are stuck "in the doldrums" until a wave of new liquefaction capacity arrives around 2030
His advice for the average investor with a day job: stay away from shipping entirely
A crypto algorithm he built almost by accident returned about 70% since March 2025 and 27% in the fund's first 35 days
1. Uncertainty, Not Risk
Noble opened by asking whether Hannisdahl had seen anything as crazy as the current environment, even against COVID.
Markets can price risk. They cannot price uncertainty, and that is the difference right now. Noble framed it through insurance: statistics exist for the odds of a plane crash or a car accident, which produces a normal distribution markets can price. "Markets cannot deal with uncertainty. And that's kind of what we're dealing with right now."
Hannisdahl agreed COVID was at least a bounded problem. "COVID was kind of a black box, but it was something you could work around with different scenarios. But right now, every scenario is as plausible as any else."
2. Trading Over Investing
Noble asked what a shipping analyst does with heavily operationally- and financially-leveraged companies when uncertainty this wide is the backdrop.
The fund's usual approach applies proprietary cyclicality models over a 12-to-18-month horizon and tolerates volatility along the way. That horizon has stopped working. "There's nothing like the medium to long-term anymore because it's changing all the time"
The fund has shifted capital away from medium-term positioning and toward short-term trading, where it is still succeeding. "We shy away from anything with duration risk, but that's a challenge when you are in an asset-heavy cyclical business"
3. Peak Cycle, Except LNG
Noble asked whether the current environment is opportunity-rich or one to trim exposure in.
Most shipping segments are cruising around peak cycle simultaneously, with LNG carriers the main exception near trough. "That's kind of the beauty of our shipping universe that there's no immediate correlation," Hannisdahl said. "But we do see peak cycle properties across many segments."
The problem shorting into a peak is the cash flow, not the direction. "Sitting there short against those cash flows, if you're lucky with the backdrop, you could easily sit there for a year or two. That's not something you can earn a lot of money on"
Nearly every geopolitical negative — war, trade war — has turned out positive for shipping, through the inefficiencies it creates, which is why medium-term shorts are hard to allocate right now even with the fund watching for the top
He put a loose timeline on when clarity might return. "We have the midterms coming up. Let's see what happens after that. But there's probably going to be a lot of noise for a couple of more years"
4. Why Shipping Never Gets a PE
Noble pivoted to a comparison with semiconductor stocks, prompted by hearing tech investors call chipmakers cheap on a price-to-earnings basis.
Nobody puts a PE multiple on a shipping stock, ever, because the earnings are transient. Noble, who said he has been in shipping stocks for 40 years, explained the sector's actual valuation method instead: book value adjusted to current steel values, with any windfall cash flow added on top as enterprise value
He drew the semiconductor parallel directly. Micron's gross margins moving from 20% to 80% and being capitalized as if durable struck him as the same mistake shipowners make buying more ships once day rates look too good: "It's only a question of time before more capacity comes"
Hannisdahl agreed oil tankers show the same characteristics, name-checking the cash flow numbers that make the comparison concrete, covered next
5. The $800K-a-Day Tanker Trade
Hannisdahl walked through why oil tankers are the most extreme example of peak-cycle economics right now.
The Hormuz route pays roughly triple the safer alternative. "And they can kind of earn instead of two, $300,000 a day, which are immense from the US Gulf, you can earn maybe $800,000 a day," Hannisdahl said, describing owners like ADNOC sailing from the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, including ship-to-ship transfers
That marginal earner is also the marginal buyer of the asset, and asset prices have moved accordingly. "There was a prompt delivery resale, $200 million, VLCC, rumored," against an order price of roughly $82-84 million in Korea a few years ago
The cash flow supports the valuation even at these levels, on paper. Frontline's forecast dividend yield for 2027 runs around 18% at a share price near 1.3 to 1.4 times book — "peak pricing on top of peak pricing," in Hannisdahl's words
Fund positioning stays neutral rather than short, purely because of that cash flow. "We're not there shorting this because of the cash flows. So we're neutral, basically, and doing short-term trading on the line markets"
6. Who's Buying at These Prices
Noble asked who is actually paying these valuations, given nobody disputes the unsustainability of an 18% equity yield.
A new type of buyer arrives at every peak, and it looks similar each cycle. Hannisdahl has seen the pattern in 2007, 2015 and the pandemic-era Saudi-Russia price war: shipping-expert, NAV-focused investors (often Oslo-based) at the start, then generalist capital — often American — chasing yield out of fear of missing out
Noble drew the parallel back to the 2000s, when private equity money piled into shipping and "got absolutely destroyed." He called the current buyers "macro tourists," his term for capital that arrives without understanding the sector's cyclicality
7. What Smart Owners Are Doing
Noble asked what the smartest shipowners Hannisdahl talks to are actually doing, without naming names — though he mentioned John Fredriksen had been reported selling tankers.
Owners split into two camps: those who pay out cash to shareholders, and those who retain it. Many companies are net debt-free or cash-positive after years of strong cash generation
Owners who also run commercial management platforms have an incentive to keep growing the fleet under management at peak cycle, which shapes their capital-allocation decisions independent of what the cash flow math alone would suggest
8. New-Build Math Says No
Noble asked Hannisdahl to walk through new-build economics: what has to be true for ordering a VLCC today to make sense.
New-building parity earnings sit around $42,000 a day against a roughly $131 million Chinese-built price, a figure Hannisdahl called "a tall ask" once you discount a 25-year asset life and weight the nearer years more heavily
Korean yards are quoting meaningfully higher and are effectively discouraging new orders. "The Korean yards are not very... they're quite tough on price at the moment because they have basically too much to do," with chatter around $150,000-$160,000 higher than the Chinese price
Shipyard efficiency and backlogs are both at multi-year highs. Build efficiency on a deadweight-ton basis is approaching, and possibly exceeding, pre-financial-crisis levels, with order books and prices both elevated
The order book stands around 26%, which is elevated but not extreme depending on growth assumptions, with deliveries concentrated in 2027 and 2028
9. If He Ran the Fleet
Noble asked what Hannisdahl would do with capital allocation if he ran a company spanning tankers, bulkers, containers and LNG.
The textbook-prudent answer is to sell the fleet and return the capital. "The prudent thing to do, in our opinion, would be to sell all the vessels, pay out all the capital, and just back into the market in a couple of years' time and raise new capital for the next tanker boom"
He immediately undercut his own answer with the cost of being early. "I would probably made the same argument like 10 months ago and then miss out on the huge upside which has been here now year to date," which is why hoarding cash on the balance sheet is something the fund is "not very big fans of" — distribute the cash generated, keep only enough for fleet renewal through depreciation
He called the setup possibly a once-in-a-generation market, without predicting when it ends
10. Four Segments, Four Views
Noble asked Hannisdahl to run through tankers, bulkers, containers and LNG in turn.
Tankers are a too-hard, fully-priced trade for a directional investor — neutral fundamentals, active only in short-term trading. "We are very active in and out of equities, derivatives, forward freight agreements," monetizing volatility as long as it isn't driven purely by social media, "because we have eyes and ears on the ground." One example: buying into a rising-spot-market equity position days before the recording that was already showing decent profits
Once the Strait of Hormuz reopens, he expects a supply glut and an inventory-rebuild cycle — "probably going to rebuild higher than before because they're fearful that this might happen again" — supporting a strong 2027 before fleet growth catches up in 2028
Bulkers are firing on all cylinders on coal, iron ore, agricultural and bauxite volumes, with China as the swing factor. China makes up roughly 40% of ton-mile demand and "is a black box," able to shift bulk demand growth from negative to 5-6% by political decision alone. The fund is "slightly negative towards 27 and 28" even with the current strength
Containers are a growth story despite the trade war, propped up by inefficiencies rather than volume. Rerouting through the Red Sea, land-logistics bottlenecks and an imbalance of empty containers have absorbed a large new-build delivery wave, but Hannisdahl said the fund is "fundamentally short operators" given the order book still ahead
LNG carriers are "in the doldrums" and likely to stay there until 2030, when a wave of new liquefaction export terminals should arrive. He singled out Flex LNG's roughly 9% yield as unsustainable at current calculations, even though it may persist "for a couple of more years" before the dividend has to reset
11. His Advice: Stay Away
Noble asked what Hannisdahl would tell an average investor without access to the fund's proprietary data.
His answer, in his own words, is "a very boring answer." With so many specialists spending every hour tracking a market with no public source of information, he said a retail investor with a day job should stick with their day job and a diversified index fund instead of picking individual shipping names
He acknowledged the advice won't win him fans. "This will not make you a popular person on Twitter, as you know"
12. The Crypto Side Bet
Noble asked about the fund's newly launched crypto strategy, which trades separately from the shipping book.
The algorithm started as a curiosity, not a plan. Hannisdahl has been "mathematically driven" since finding an arbitrage in a British football-betting system at age 13; he spent an hour drafting a first version of a crypto algorithm and found it backtested to roughly 100% compound annual growth since 2015
He live-tested it with his own money starting in March 2025 before launching a fund around it in August 2026. The live test returned about 70% before launch; the fund itself returned 27% in its first 35 days
It is a diversified, long-short strategy he could not replicate outside crypto. He tried the same algorithm on copper, oil and the S&P 500 without success. "I think it might be a bit about behavioral finance. It's a lot of retail sentiment. That's my best guess"
The fund has been open to outside investors since 5 August 2026
Hannisdahl's bottom line is that shipping's current cash flows are real and extraordinary, but they are being generated entirely by inefficiencies — closed straits, sanctioned fleets, rerouted trade — that could vanish overnight with a single diplomatic outcome, which is why the fund is trading the volatility rather than betting on the direction.
Bonus Insights
Noble asked about weather as a coming catalyst. Hannisdahl flagged VLGCs as heavily exposed to El Niño disruption through the Panama Canal, alongside Panamax, Supramax and Handysize bulkers during the agricultural shipping season — "the upcoming winter could be very interesting"
Asked about specific dry bulk names, Hannisdahl declined to weigh in on Diana Shipping directly but offered a framework instead: "everything has its right price." He called Genco a well-run name for dry bulk exposure and Himalaya Shipping the best-run company in the space, though also the most expensive and currently raising equity at what he called a discount for Greek citizens. He said he had recommended Star Bulk to his own Substack readers, which has performed well since
On product tankers and Scorpio Tankers specifically, Hannisdahl noted high refiner margins but export restrictions limiting product availability, without a strong directional call either way
He closed on a note about market psychology rather than fundamentals. "People are inherently greedy and optimistic. And if you put those trades together, you get a kind of a peak cycle market. It's always about fear and greed. The pendulum is always going from one extreme to the other," and right now, he said, sentiment sits closer to greed than fear
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