By contrast, a bareboat contract is like leasing a car. The charterer is responsible for all voyage expenses, on top of maintenance and other operational costs.

A company can have its boats out in any combination of these ways, depending on its corporate strategy. Historically, companies that are more exposed to the spot market can see their revenue fluctuate wildly. Many companies prefer to lock their fleet into time contracts and a more stable revenue stream, but contracts can be defaulted on, so there are no guarantees.

Because of the variation in mix of charter types each company can have, the industry has devised a way of comparing apples to apples. The time charter equivalent (TCE) is the average daily revenue performance of a vessel on a per-voyage basis. Companies divide operating revenues (minus voyage expenses and commissions) by operating days for a specific time period. This little miracle number allows you to look across companies and compare company performance despite changes in charter mix.

The other handy number the companies report is fleet utilization, a measure of how well a company is using its fleet. It is commonly calculated by dividing the number of operating days by available days during a specific period. "The shipping industry uses fleet utilization to measure a company's efficiency in finding suitable employment for its vessels and minimizing the number of days that its vessels are off-hire for reasons other than scheduled repairs or repairs under guarantee, vessel upgrades, special surveys or vessel positioning." (from Genco Shipping 3Q results)

With those tools in hand, let's take a look at some companies and see how they stack up. Here's a handy chart for easy comparison. The companies are sorted by size.

The key thing to note: As of Nov. 6, not all of the companies have reported their third-quarter earnings. Data for Diana Shipping, Euroseas, TBSI and OceanFreight is from the second quarter and may be higher or lower once third-quarter results are reported, so we've got a bit of a fruit mismatch here.

Diana Shipping

Diana Shipping (NYSE: DSX) is the largest company by market cap, and it's focused on time charters. The downside of this strategy is that they were unable to take advantage of the high spot rates of May and June, unless one of their time charters was up for renewal. The upside to this strategy is less exposure to the BDI's volatility. Here's that chart again.

DSX's stock price has managed to be less affected by BDI's nosedive than any other shipping company. Whether it's a function of size, strategy or reputation, DSX's stock lives inside the trading range for shipping stocks. Third-quarter results should show us how well this holds (Nov. 11).

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