TITLE:
To What Extent the Fractal Behavior of a Financial Turbulence Can Help Greek Shipowners to Forecast Their Freight Rate Markets?
AUTHORS:
Alexandros Μ. Goulielmos, Mariniki Psifia
KEYWORDS:
Nature & Markets, The Global Financial Slump 2009, Predicting/Forecasting Shipping Chaotic Time Series, The Noah and Joseph Effects, The H and Alpha Exponents, Visioning versus Forecasting, The Lyapunov Exponent
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.17 No.6,
June
25,
2026
ABSTRACT: Mandelbrot & Hudson (2006) constructed bridges between Nature and Markets in a way making us to believe that forecasting of (freight rate) markets— i.e. the subject-dream of all maritime economists—at last, will become true. But it did not. Noah knew that after 100 years of building the Ark, the flood will terminate all lives found outside it. Humans also experienced the 1929-1936 Great Depression, (i.e. the 1st “Noah effect” in Economics), and maritime economists lived their 1918 1st “Noah effect”. The end-2008 2nd Noah effect, however, reminded maritime economists of the freight rate indices, which increased gradually from 7,000 units to 19,000, within 7 years. Moreover, the frequent 7 yearly, or so, shipping cycles reminded researchers that the “Joseph biblical case” can re-happen. Economists tend to study events that are re-coming back from time to time, so they led them to the “Hurst exponent”, indicating “long term memory in the data”, and to alpha, showing fat tails. The computer program we used gave us H = 0.69 and alpha = 1.45, meaning that the Normal Distribution is a special case.