Total N. American rail traffic came in at 760k carloads last week just off the all time high (764k carloads) set a few weeks ago. What is interesting about the number is that we would expect it to be much lower heading into the last two weeks of the year. The chart below shows previous years have featured far more pronounced downtrends heading into year end while we currently are basically flatlined (down .05%)
What this does tell us is that we are still seeing a stronger that normal year end from a rail standpoint and that correlates to a stronger GDP reading etc…
Clearly we will have to wait and see if this is simply a one off event but we are not supposed to be seeing readings this high at this point in the calendar……that we are can only be good news.
