Red Sea Disruptions and Their Ripple Effects on Markets and Trade

Our expert panel discusses how the Red Sea situation is affecting the global economy and equity markets, as well as key sectors and the shipping industry.

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Jens Eisenschmidt: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I am Jens Eisenschmidt, Morgan Stanley's Chief Europe Economist.

Marina Zavolock: And I'm Marina Zavolock, Chief European Equity Strategist.

Cedar Ekblom: And I'm Cedar Ekblom, Shipping and Logistics Analyst.

Jens Eisenschmidt: And on this special episode of the podcast, we will discuss the ongoing Red Sea disruptions and the various markets and economic dislocations caused by it. It's Tuesday, February 13th, 6pm in Frankfurt.

Marina Zavolock: And 5pm in London.

Marina Zavolock: 12 per cent of global trade and 30 per cent of container trade passes through the Suez Canal in Egypt, which connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Safety concerns stemming from the recent attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea have driven the majority of container liners to divert trade around the Cape of Good Hope, pushing up container freight rates more than 200 per cent versus December of last year on the Asia to Europe route.

Last week, our colleague Michael Zezas touched briefly on the situation in the Red Sea. Now we'd like to dig deeper and examine this from three key lenses. The European economy, the impact on equity markets and industries, as well as on global container shipping in particular.

Marina Zavolock: So Cedar, let's start with you. You’ve had a high conviction call since freight rates peaked in the middle of January – that container shipping rates overshot and were likely to decline. We've started to see the decline. How do you see this developing from here?

Cedar Ekblom: Thanks, Marina. Well, if we take a step back and we think about how far container rates have come from the peak, we're about 15 per cent lower than where we were in the middle of January. But we're still nearly 200 per cent ahead of where we were on the 1st of December before the disruption started.

Cedar Ekblom: The reason why we're so convicted that freight rates are heading lower from here really comes down to the supply demand backdrop in container shipping. We have an outlook of significant excess supply playing out in [20]24 and extending into [20]25. During the COVID boom, container companies enjoyed very high freight rates and generated a lot of cash as a result. And they've put that cash to use in ordering new ships. All of this supply is starting to hit the market. So ultimately, we have a situation of too much supply relative to container demand.

Another thing that we've noticed is that ships are speeding up. We have great data on this. And since boats have been diverted around the Cape of Good Hope, we've seen an increase in sailing speeds, which ultimately blunts the supply impact from those ships being diverted.

And then finally, if we look at the amount of containers actually moving through the Suez Canal, this is down nearly 80 per cent year over year.

Sure, we're not at zero yet, and there is ultimately [a] downside to no ships moving through the canal. But we think we are pretty close to the point of maximum supply side tension. That gives us conviction that freight rates are going lower from here.

Jens Eisenschmidt: Thank you, Cedar, for this clear overview of the outlook for the container shippers. Marina, let's widen our lens and talk about the broader impact of the Red Sea situation. What are the ripple effects to other sectors and industries and are they in any way comparable to supply chain disruptions we saw as a result of the COVID pandemic?

Marina Zavolock: So what we've done in equity strategy is we've worked with over 10 different sector analyst teams where we've seen the most prominent impacts from the situation in the Red Sea. We've worked as well with our commodity strategy team. And what we were interested in is finding the dislocations in stock moves related to the Red Sea disruptions in light of Cedar's high conviction and differentiated view.

And what we found is that if you take the stocks that are pricing in the most earnings upside, and you look at them on a ratio basis versus the stocks that have priced in the most earnings downside. That performance along with container freight rates peaked sometime in January and has been declining. But there's more to go in light of Cedar's view in that decline.

We believe that these moves will continue to fade and the bottom group, the European retailers that are most exposed. They have fully priced in the bear case of Red Sea disruptions continuing and also that the freight rate levels more importantly stay at these recent peaks. So we believe that ratio will continue to fade on both sides.

The second point is you have some sectors, like European Airlines, where there's also been an impact. Air freight yields have risen by 25 per cent in Europe. And we believe that there is the potential for more persistent spillover in demand for certain customers that look to speed up delivery times.

The third point is that in case of an escalation scenario in the Red Sea, we believe that it's less the container shipping companies at this point that would be impacted and we actually see the European refiners as most exposed to any kind of escalation scenario.

And lastly, and I think this is going to tie into Jens’ economics.

We see a fairly idiosyncratic and broadly limited impact on Europe overall. Yes, Europe is the most exposed region of developed market regions globally – but this is nowhere near a COVID 2.0 style supply chain disruption in our view.

Marina Zavolock: And Jens, if I could turn it back to you, how do you estimate the impact of these Red Sea disruptions on the European economy?

Jens Eisenschmidt: That's indeed one thing we were sort of getting busy on and trying to find a way to get a handle on what has happened there and what would be the implications. And of course, the typical thing, what you do is you go back in time and look [at] what has happened last time. We were seeing changes to say delivery time. So basically disruptions in supply chains.

And of course, the big COVID induced supply chain disruptions had [a] significant impact on both inflation and output. And so, it's of course a normal thing to ask yourself, could this be again happening and what would we need to see?

And of course, we have to be careful here because that essentially is assuming that the underlying structure of the shock is similar to the one we have seen in the past, which of course it's not the case.

But you know, again, it's instructive at least to see what the current level of supply chain disruptions as measurable in these PMI sub-indices. What they translate to in inflation? And so we get a very muted impact so far. We have 10 basis points for the EU area, 15 basis points for the UK. But again, that's probably an upper bound estimate because the situation is slightly different than it was back then.

Back then under COVID, there was clearly a limit to demand. So demand was actually pushing hard against the limits of good supply. And so that has to be more inflationary than in the current situation where actually demand, if anything, is weakened by [the] central bank chasing inflation targets and also weak global backdrop.

So, essentially we would say, yes, there could be some small uptick in inflation, but it's really limited. And that's talking about here, core goods inflation. The other point that you could sort of be worried about is commodity prices and here in particular energy commodities.

But so far the price action here is very, very limited.

If anything, so far, TTF prices are, you know, going in the other direction. So all, all in all, we don't really see a risk here for commodity prices, at least. If the tensions in the Red Sea are not persisting longer and intensify further – and here really, this chimes very well in the analysis of Cedar and also with Marina – what you just mentioned.

That doesn't really look like any supply chain disruption we have seen on the COVID. And it also doesn't really look like that it would, sort of, last for so long. And we have the backdrop of a oversupply of containers. So all in all, we think the impact is pretty limited. But let's sort of play the devil's advocate and say, what would happen to inflation if this were to persist?

And again, the backdrop would be similar to COVID. Then we could think of 70 basis points, both in the Euro area and the UK added to inflation. And of course that's sizable. And that's precisely why you have central bankers around the world, not particularly concerned about it – but certainly mentioning it in their public statements that this is a development to watch.

Marina Zavolock: Thank you Jens, and thank you Cedar for taking the time to talk.

Cedar Ekblom: Great speaking with you both.

Jens Eisenschmidt: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.