Fixture data is a record of charterparty agreements, typically collected by brokers or other market participants. The data records the vessel, the charterer, the cargo, the locations of load/discharge, and the rate agreed.

Fixture data is a patchwork, as there are so many transactions there is no one provider that has all global fixtures recorded (indeed, some may never be recorded) and brokers will often choose not to report their own fixtures.

What you will tend to find is that the brokers/market participants with specific specialities, tend to have stronger data in the markets they specialise in (e.g. tanker brokers have good tanker fixtures).

Benefits

Fixture Data has been used as a major input into a number of the commodity flow tools, as it provides matter of fact market data on the movement of commodities. 

Fixture Data also provide a large amount of commercial information, more so than the other cargo data sources such as lineup data.

Drawbacks

Difficult to obtain anything close to ‘complete’ coverage, as brokers will very rarely report on their own transactions. In addition to this, some charterers will only work with brokers on the condition that their identity remains undisclosed, further adding to the issue.

Many brokers will not report anything, further adding to the challenge of identifying transactions.