Rail traffic trends continue to weaken as this week’s intermodal traffic report came in at 3.8% year over year growth. This is up slightly from last week’s reading of 2.5%, but brings the 3 month moving average down to 3.8% from 4%. I continue to see this as being consistent with an economy that is growing, but only marginally. Here’s more from the AAR:
“The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported mixed weekly rail traffic for the week ending October 6, 2012, with U.S. railroads originating 283,440 carloads, down 6.3 percent compared with the same week last year. Intermodal volume for the week totaled 251,113 trailers and containers, up 3.8 percent compared with the same week last year.
Ten of the 20 carload commodity groups posted increases compared with the same week in 2011, with petroleum products, up 46.1 percent; farm products excluding grain, up 30 percent, and lumber and wood products, up 11.2 percent. The groups showing a decrease in weekly traffic included coal, down 18.1 percent; iron and steel scrap, down 17.9 percent, and waste and nonferrous scrap, down 11.5 percent.
Weekly carload volume on Eastern railroads was down 7.9 percent compared with the same week last year. In the West, weekly carload volume was down 5.3 percent compared with the same week in 2011.
For the first 40 weeks of 2012, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 11,325,845 carloads, down 2.6 percent from the same point last year, and 9,462,377 trailers and containers, up 3.7 percent from last year.”
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
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