$$ Rail Muddles Along

Total N. American rail traffic last week came in at 673k cars. For the last 4 weeks traffic has fluctuated between 673k -692k cars.

Traffic has held up nicely through the fall and from that we can extrapolate so has US economic activity. We should begin to see extreme volatility in results over the next 7 weeks as we end the year (wow…only 7 weeks left in 2010). The overall numbers will begin to slide with large drops around Turkey Day and Christmas. This is normal, do not be surprised or alarmed. We then need to turn our attention to Jan. We want to see traffic in Jan rebound hard to pre-holiday levels or more in January’s 4 weeks.