There were high hopes in the 2000s and even the 2010s that ocean shipping would evolve into something more than a niche trading and investing space on Wall Street.
The hope was that consolidation would whittle down the crowded field to a few large-cap whales with business models that worked across cycles and garnered the respect of larger investment funds. The reality over the past half-decade: Consolidation is coinciding with larger-cap shipping stocks going private. And the field of shipping...