The Corea Exchange is the world's only independent source of maritime market information for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative contracts.
The exchange provides daily freight market prices and maritime shipping cost indices which are used to settle freight futures (known as Forward Freight Agreements or FFAs).
Corea Dry Index[]
The Corea Dry Index (CDI) is a number (in UKP) issued daily by the Seoul based Corea Exchange. Not restricted to Asian countries, the index provides an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea.
How it works[]
Every working day, a panel of international shipbrokers submits their view of current freight cost on various routes to the Corea Exchange. The routes are meant to be representative, i.e. large enough in volume to matter for the overall market.
The CDI contains route assessments based only on time-charter hire rates "UKP paid per day per Metric Ton". Fuel (="Bunkers") is the largest voyage dependent cost and moves with the crude oil price. In periods where bunker costs fluctuate significantly, there CDI will therefore move more than the shipowners' realised earnings.