Hey,

Somewhere in a Chinese shipyard right now, a container ship is being welded together for a market that does not need it. So is the next one. And the one after that.

Every shipping line knows this. Every shipping line keeps ordering.

This is not stupidity. It is worse: it is rational.

This month, MSC ordered 20 ships of 24,000 TEU at Hengli Heavy Industries in Dalian. HMM signed for eight more. Those two orders pushed the global container orderbook to 16.2 million TEU, or 46.5% of the fleet already sailing. The highest ratio since 2009.

The last time we saw a ratio like this, the industry was busy discovering the global financial crisis.