Shipping has always been a high risk business, particularly in the dry cargo and tanker markets. The large numbers of buyers and sellers, plus the sellers’ simultaneous responses to market fluctuations, have caused long periods of low profitability and only short bursts of high profit levels. There are several types of risk faced by the shipowner. The most important is the market risk. While the owner can monitor and predict his daily running costs, which remain reasonably steady, he has little control over revenue. Earnings from a ship fluctuate by large amounts spatially and temporally. A second area of risk exposure is to bunker prices which have varied considerably in recent years. While these will, to some extent, be passed on to the shipper, a lag is apparent, particularly when there is oversupply of shipping. The third set of risks faced is financial. The capital cost of ships makes owners more susceptible to interest rate changes than entrepreneurs in less capital-intensive operations. Currency fluc