i was just looking at some stock and realized… RAILROAD STOCK IS DOING VERY GOOD!
here is some of the listings i found:
railway co.- 52 week high- 52 week low- curent price
BNSF : $95.47 $67.24 $80.55
CN: $58.49 $40.77 $55.21
CP: $90.15 $46.65 $67.62
CSX: $51.88 $29.81 $40.10
UP: $129.36 $82.71 $110.15
thease are just a few here is the website i got the info from:
While I have done real well with UPRR having owned it for several years the real winner is NSRR [:)]
look how low CSX stock is compared to the others.
heh heh heh… might wanna fix that track up, CSX. 
Well a few years ago, I pooh pooh’ed google stock when they hit 150 a share. Now it seems they are close to 600 per share.
this is a reflection of how good the railroads are doing today, GE stock was at about $50 yesterday so in comparison railroads are doing very good! [:)]
UP is up to about $116.00 today
Stock prices of various companies reflect the price that the companies desire their stock to be traded in. Historically, CSX has desired that their stock be traded in the $30/50 range. When the price gets consistantly above $50 a share the company then splits the stock so that the per share price returns to the desired trading range…CSX last split their stock 2 for 1 last year.
If you read up on BLI (BNSF) -my fav road, u will see it was about $4.71/share last April. It went up and split 3-1 last July. I really need to get ahold of some cash and buy something that does this kinda thing.
I just keep telling myself 'Who knew?", I hope that works pretty soon. If I took the amount of cash I had in April on hand I coulda bought 2,000 shares. My math tells me I would have made around $160,000 in profit! (YA I would have sold it and got that quick cash!)
Buy on bad news, sell on good news.
Looks like a sell time more than a buy time.
sfrailfan, where did you get your financial data? The last time BNI split was a 3-1 on September 2, 1998. Share prices haven’t been below $10 since 1991.
I wish I had a citation, but there were studies done to this effect years and years ago that a company maximized its market capitalization when its stock was selling at a price that maximized the number of buyers. There was a price “sweet spot” somewhere between $30 and $50 per share [back in those days] that represented a psychological comfort zone for the average buyer. A sophisticated company keeps an eye on that comfort zone [it’s modern equivalent value] because anything that maximizes the market capitalization increases the net market equity value of shareholder stock – a key management function.
Under that theory, UP has a lower market capitalization currently than it would at $45 per share. That is, the average shareholder would have more value after a 3-1 stock split resulting in the $45 per share market price (holding three such shares) than the shareholder would at $120 per share.
so… how often do railroads stock split? im looking into csx (i dont have alot of cash) and i need money model railroading. ( out of one train, in to another i geuss [:)] )
Comparing GE to the Class One RRs is absurd. GE is a diversified multinational corporation with $163 Billion in revenue in 2006. Its Market Capitalization of $422 Billion exceeds that of the Class One RRs combined. Its operating margin last year was 15.07%; its return on equity, 18.65%.
Since 2003, GE’s stock price has significantly underperformed both the S&P 500 and the Dow, whereas NS, CSX, UP and BNSF have outperformed the S&P 500 over the same period.
Nonetheless, over a twenty year horizon, GE is probably a better investment than the Class Ones.
By the way, GE closed at $41.39 today.
Dave
“Railroad Stock VERY [TOO] HIGH”
Where I work that’s taken to mean head for the hills! “Buy low sell high”!
Seriously, rather than being at their highs, it does appear that the railroad stocks have backed off significantly from their levels as of last July when the credit squeeze started to bite. In my opinion, you can take that to mark the end of a long economic expansion and the U.S. is about to enter a recession. As the railroads have traditionally been viewed as cyclical stocks (sensitive to the business cycle), railroad shares should reflect the downtrend. One good thing about the railroad shares is that their P/E ratios have remained reasonable. This is probably one of the reasons for the interest of institutional shareholders over the past year. Hope you did well from the ride while it lasted.
Indeed! Earlier this year CSX stock had a “run-up” in share price. Later on there came more of a “run-down.” Which IMHO is what too much of their ROW is. lol. - a. s.
I agree that at one time the “sweet spot” did exist somewhere in that range. The reasoning was that it was an comfortable size investment for an individual purchasing a “round lot” (100 shares).
We could calculate where that same sweet sport would be today if we assumed a date for its existance – maybe 1968 or so, which is generally held as the end of a relatively long period of price stability.
However, that would ignore a fundamental change in the nature of stock ownership. Stock ownership by individuals is generally held to be more widespread than at any time in our history, but it is held indirectly through institutions such as mutual funds, 401(k)'s, pension plans and the like. The result is that transaction size has increased far beyond mere inflation, to these types of participants in the market 10,000 shares is a common transaction share amount.
To take a typical company (and keep this railroad related) I picked BNSF as an example, and the data is from AOL’s finance page. Institutional holdings:
The top 10 institutions own 40%, the top 50 institutions own 62%, and the top 100 institutions own 78%.
Other railroads would yield similiar results. I’m afraid the sweet spot for the individual investor has gone the way of the mom and pop grocery store.
‘‘While I have done real well with UPRR having owned it for several years the real winner is NSRR’’
I believe you mean NSC, Norfolk Southern Corporation. NSRR is North Shore RR which is a short line in the north.
Kevin
This is good news but not everyone is a trader; some are investors. So the real question for me is what are the dividends per share?
i dunno i diddent check.
I don’t know whether those old stock price studies ever applied to railroads; although they have certainly split stocks in the past in a seeming homage to the theory. The only large railroads I have any info about prior to 1933 suggests that the overall percentage of stock ownerships hasn’t really changed that much. After the passage of the rail barons and their family holdings, large life insurance companies became the major “institutional” investors owning usually about 70%. That is, 5% of the shareholders owned 70% or more of a given company, and 95% of the shareholders owned 30% or less of the company. It would be interesting to see what kind of change has occured among companies in general, and among railroads in particular.