Thursday, July 29, 2010

Warren Buffett's Favorite Economic Indicator - Weekly Rail Traffic - Maintains Steady Pace

WASHINGTON, D.C. – July 29, 2010 – "The Association of American Railroads today reported that rail traffic continues to maintain a steady pace with U.S. railroads originating 286,854 carloads for the week ending July 24, 2010, up 4.7 percent compared with the same week in 2009, but down 13.5 percent from pre-recession levels in 2008.

Intermodal traffic totaled 230,443 trailers and containers, up 19.2 percent from the same week a year ago and down only 2.1 percent compared with 2008. Compared with the same week in 2009, container volume increased 21.1 percent and trailer volume rose 9.3 percent. Compared with the same week in 2008, container volume increased 6.4 percent and trailer volume dropped 33.4 percent.

Fifteen of the 19 carload commodity groups increased from the comparable week in 2009. Those groups posting the most significant gains were metallic ores, up 56.3 percent; metals and products, up 31.2 percent; motor vehicles and equipment, up 29 percent; and farm products excluding grain, up 25.8 percent. Farm products excluding grain, up 5.6 percent, was the only commodity group to post an increase over 2008 levels."

2 Comments:

At 7/29/2010 4:56 PM, Blogger Benjamin Cole said...

Benjamin said...
Rail traffic is nice--but see this seminal report issued by the President of St Louis Fed. He calls for quantitative easing. It is right in the front of the St Louis website btw.

Morgan--you should read this. You can call me a nut, and say Scott Sumner is crazy. But this is the President of the St Louis Fed.

You guys may wish to get out of left field and start addressing the big issue of the day: QE.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/econ/bullard/pdf/SevenFacesSummaryFinal.pdf

 
At 7/29/2010 6:07 PM, Blogger James said...

Rail traffic increase is a bad sign for Americans. It means that our jobs and our money are flowing overseas

 

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