While ship prices have plummeted by an extended troubled shipping market, newbuilding investment has sharply decreased, on the other hand, secondhand deals appears to be active.
The price for a five-year-old capesize bulker (172,000 dwt), as of the end of June, 2012, has fallen to around $33.4m, down by 22% from $42.9m a year earlier and plunged by 78% from $153m at the end of June 2008. 
According to Golden Destiny, mid-to-large bulkers' second hand vessel prices have particularly dropped in the first half of the year and the newbuilding market shows similar declines as well. Korea and China's mid-to-large shipyards offer low prices to seal newbuildings.
However, "Shipowners are conservative in the placement of new contracts at the instability of the freight market, financial troubles and the oversupply issues despite a historically low prices," said Golden Destiny.
On the contrary, shipowners have invested a total of $6.1bn for 555 second-hand vessels in H1, 2012, amid plummeted second hand prices, down by 9% in numerical terms from the same period of last year with 610 vessels, $10.7bn.
Golden Destiny said, bulkers and tankers accounted for 33% and 26% of the total investment, in particular, bulker S&P activity recorded overall 185 vessels, totalling $2.5bn with 80 vessels in Q1 and 105 in Q2.
While capesizes struggling to cover their operating expenses and BDI crawling to remain at around 1,000p, H1 secondhand purchase declined by 6% y-o-y to 196 vessels ($3.4bn), which posed the least downfall among other segments.
Greek owners took 15% of second hand purchase, while Chinese accounted for 9%. In the first half of the year, the Greek have purchased overall 95 vessels ($2.2bn) of second hand vessels, down by 24% year-on-year, while the Chinese plummeted by 41%.