A Leveraged Investment Vehicle for the Global Rail Industry

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An article on ETF Trends yesterday by Timothy Hubbard provides a bullish outlook for the future of rail transport and lists the major holdings in the iShares Dow Transports ETF (IYT) from the railroad industry. My new index/ETF idea, Global Railroad BULLISHares, would provide investors with a leveraged and diversified investment vehicle for the global rail transport industry.

As illustrated in the accompanying image, the four major US-based railroad companies drove the performance in this index, including Union Pacific (UNP), Burlington Northern (BNI), Norfolk Southern (NSC), and CSX Corp (CSX). These four domestic railroads were all up over 25% in the last year and occupy four of the top five companies by market cap. The China-based railroads were the biggest drag on the index in sympathy with the overall drop in the Chinese stock market; although just three of the 28 total rail companies (representing about 9%) are based in China.

All market data is updated through the close of 8/7/08 from Bloomberg's website.

Disclosure: none

Comments

[cam:]

This would ROCK! If I was able to make some changes, I would add:

KOP KOPPERS HOLDINGS
FSTR FOSTER LB CO
PRPX PORTEC RAIL PRODU
PWX PROVD & WORCHEST

The 1st two are major players in railroad infrastructure, the 2nd two are regional / short lines. Too bad more regional / short line RR's are not publicly traded. There is at least one small RR that is OTC, but do not recall which one as of this writting.

2008 Aug 11 04:05 PM

[Mike Havrilla:]

Thanks, Cam - See the updated post on this idea at my blog with 36 total companies:
mikehav.blogspot.com/2...

2008 Aug 11 04:42 PM