Forecasting China's coastal coal freight index based on the PatchTST model

Coal is one of the major bulk commodities transported by Chinese coastal ships, and the China Coastal Coal Freight Index (CBCFI), which consists of spot market rates and composite indices of China's coastal coal transport released daily, fully reflects market fluctuations and supply/demand situations, and it is very important for market participants to realize accurate forecasts of this index. Using Pearson's correlation coefficient method, this paper establishes a total of seven forecasting indicators for both coal supply and demand and transport cost and compares the forecasting effect of the index using four forecasting models. The experiments show that: coal supply and demand data is the most important factor affecting the index trend, followed by transport cost; the PatchTST model is the most suitable for predicting the index, with the best effect; the best prediction effect is achieved when the input time step is 48 days, and the prediction error increases with increasing the time step. The accurate prediction of the index can provide data support for ship transport capacity scheduling, and at the same time, it can help the upstream and downstream enterprises in the coal supply chain to grasp the market dynamics more accurately.