General economists, as well as Maritime economists, <italic>assume</italic> that the time series they forecast follow normal distribution, and data is independently and identically distributed around the mean. This paper contests this assumption with the aid of three sets of time series: (1) The Dry Cargo...

This paper forecast/predicted the one-year time charter weekly freight rates earned by a 65 000 dwt bulk carrier using 996 weeks of data from 1989 to 2008. First, the need and the importance, but also the futility, of forecasting is discussed in shipping. This is a volatile industry that can be...