They are increasingly unloved, micro-cap and nano-cap public shipowners that somehow tick along with tiny equity values despite a chorus of voices telling them to stop.

“The game’s over,” for such companies, declared veteran banker and public-company executive Morten Arntzen at TradeWinds Shipowners Forum in Athens last October.

“They’re just too small for the big investors to look at,” fund manager David Marcus of Evermore Global Advisors said in February.