This paper investigates systematic risk in global shipping stocks. Although the shipping business with its strong cyclical nature and its high financial as well as operating leverageis perceived as highly risk-laden, prior studies have documented rather low marketbetas. We analyze whether the estimated systematic risk in shipping stocks is robust to different estimation methods, stock liquidity, and different sampling periods. Us-ing a comprehensive sample of 248shipping companies, we confirm that systematic risk in shipping stocks is rather moderate on average. However, market beta estimates are quite heterogeneous over the cross-section of firms. We further document strong beta variation over timeand show thatcosts of equity capital in the mari-time industryareclosely tied to freight rates.Given the magnitude of time variation in estimated costs of capi-tal, ourresults have important implications for capital budgeting and capital raising decisions of shipping companies in practice.