Dividend ideas for shipping investors, Part 2

Tanker preferred stocks

Painful weeks for tanker investors. Only one tanker shipowner, DHT Holdings, keeps its YTD gains in the high teens. The rest are struggling to stay afloat.

Is this a call to end the tanker bull market? Nope. It is a reminder of the inherent volatility in shipping stocks—and volatility is a feature, not a bug.

However, today, the topic is not volatility and how to harness it. It's time for the second episode of my adventures in the preferred equity universe. Last time, I discussed preferred stock selection basics and shared two ideas. The companies in question are Diana Shipping and Safe Bulkers, mid-size bulk carrier owners.

Today, we move to another popular segment, tankers. Despite the variety of companies in the tanker universe, only two offer preferred equity: Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited and Imperial Petroleum.

Tsakos owns a large fleet of crude and product tankers. Imperial is a nano-cap shipowner with eight tankers and three dry bulk carriers. But first, let’s examine if the ta…