Baltic Exchange panellist system
How a Baltic assessment is produced: panel selection, expert judgement, the reporting window, tolerance flagging, validation, and the five-year record rule.
A Baltic index is the simple arithmetical average of input data submitted by a panel of shipbroking firms, each reporting its professional judgement of the prevailing open market level for a defined route on a defined ship. There is no trimmed mean on the physical routes, and the only weighted exception is the wet bulk forward curve, where inputs are weighted by each panellist’s clearing house market share in the preceding month.
The full article will cover panel selection and the minimum of five contributors, the non-publication floor of four, the governed use of expert judgement on an illiquid route, the tolerance ranges that flag an outlier for assessor contact, the rule that BEISL will never require a panellist to change its data, and the five-year retention of every submission.