ABSTRACT
Shipping cycles create endless problems for shipping investors and analysts alike. The shipping industry, like Sisyphus, the mythological character condemned to pushing a stone up a hill, only for it to roll down again, seems to be caught in an endless sequence of cycles over which it has no real control. So why bother to issue warnings?1 How would Sisyphus have felt if each time he was half way up the hill some smart economist was standing there to warn him that the stone would soon be on its way down again? Shipowners feel the same way about the killjoy analysts intent on spoiling their bit of fun during the all-too-brief freight booms.
