Rail Traffic Worrisome for US Economy, Bank of America Says
It's not the jobs report or the latest housing data but railway cargo that has analysts at Bank of America concerned.
Railroad cargo in the United States dropped the most in six years in 2015, and things aren't looking good for the new year.
"We believe rail data may be signaling a warning for the broader economy," the recent note from Bank of America said. "Carloads have declined more than 5% in each of the past 11 weeks on a year-over-year basis. While one-off volume declines occur occasionally, they are generally followed by a recovery shortly thereafter. The current period of substantial and sustained weakness, including last week’s -10.1% decline, has not occurred since 2009."
BofA analysts led by Ken Hoexter look at the past 30 years to see what this type of steep decline usually means for the economy. What they found wasn't particularly encouraging: All such drops in rail carloads preceded, or were accompanied by, an economic slowdown (Note: They excluded 1996 due to an extremely harsh winter).
"Similar periods of weakness have occurred in only five other instances since 1985: (1) the majority of 1988, (2) the first half of 1991, (3) several weeks in early 1996, (4) late 2000 and early 2001, and (5) late 2008 and the majority of 2009 … all either overlapped with a recession, or preceded a recession by a few quarters."
Of course, many would argue that a shift away from coal-powered energy, a slowdown in the industrial sector and the petering out of the U.S. shale boom naturally would lead to fewer goods being moved by rail. Hoexter and his team, however, suggest that the slowdown is spreading to more consumer-oriented segments. Intermodal carloads typically related to consumer goods were up 1% in the first quarter of 2015 and 3.6% in the second quarter but fell 1.7% in the final quarter of last year.
Thus the team is taking a cautious tone, at least through the first half of the year when the analysts cite tough comparatives. "While many of the rails have successfully trimmed expenses commensurate with volume declines, we are concerned about the extent to which cost-cutting can support [earnings-per-share] growth targets," they wrote.
