Global Economic Perspectives: Supply chain stress spreads to shipping costs

Research evidence excerpt

Global Economic Perspectives: Supply chain stress spreads to shipping costs

Global Research

18 June 2026ab

Global Economic Perspectives Economics

GlobalSupply chain stress spreads to shipping costs

Pierre Lafourcade

Economist

Supply chain stress continues to rise pierre.lafourcade@ubs.com

+1-212-713 4543

Our Global Supply Chain Stress Index has continued to deteriorate, despite the recent

decline in energy prices. In our update mid-May (here), we noted that the index had Arend Kapteyn

Economistworsened by roughly 1.2 standard deviations since the onset of the Middle East conflict.

arend.kapteyn@ubs.com

Figure 1 below shows the latest June reading, based on weekly data up to last Friday +44-20-7567 0531

(with missing observations proxied by the prior month’s values). The median of the 23

component series (blue line) now stands at 2.9 standard deviations—an increase of Alan Detmeister

around 2½ standard deviations since the conflict began—and marks the highest level

alan.detmeister@ubs.com

since May 2022. This reading predates the geopolitical developments of the past few +1-212-713 1222

days and so may well end up being a high watermark. But we suspect a sustained

improvement across many indicators will likely require a tangible normalization in the Cristian Nedelcu, CFA

Analyst

flow of global energy shipments, not just a decline in prices driven by expectations of

cristian.nedelcu@ubs.com

resolution alone. +44-20-7568 4375

After a slow reaction to the conflict, shipping costs are now accelerating

The indicator is constructed as the cross sectional average of z-scored series—a first-

order approximation to the data’s first principal component. Figure 2 overleaf shows the

contributions over the past four months. The indicator most directly capturing the