The drop in container traffic on the Alameda Corridor, with a nearly 20% year over year loss of TEU's at POLA/POLB, and the almost 9% year over year national drop in rail car loadings, and the nearly 8% drop in rail TEU's, goes way beyond loss of coal volumes, and the drop in imports and exports due to the trade war. The article on Alameda Corridor was especially interesting from that perspective.

These drops are the kind of RR car loading "numbers" you'd expect to see in a recession, as is also seen with some of those "time series" charts on varying volumes in the ACTA article.

These significant drops in major RR economic indicators might may now also be reflecting the nearly 9 percent drop in US private business capital investment spending, year over year. These RR and trade numbers seem historically inconsistent with a stock market setting record highs, and with PE ratios approaching historically extremely high 23/1 levels...? Which has me wondering how much "cheap" ("negative" interest rates to savers and lenders by aggressive Federal Reserve "intervention") money can some folks continue to borrow at some of these companies, and use that debt to "bid up" their stock prices, if revenues start to flatten out, or fall....? ACTA is not alone in having that potential problem...

I also note that I just saw Jim Cramer prattling on again about how these "traditional" metrics in the market aren't as meaningful anymore, just the other day. It reminded me of the same kind of nonsense Cramer was spewing about how the "rules of investing" had changed, back in 2008, when he told everyone to go buy Lehman Bros., because it was becoming so "cheap"....

Remember, buy low, sell high.... unless, of course, you're shorting the market...