Stock Broker Views On Air, Surface And Sea

When I first began trading stock online, my favorite things to buy and sell were transportation companies. Many sectors of the market had been deregulated for about a decade, and the real win-ners and losers were starting to be decided.

At that time I was working in the transportation industry, and was keeping abreast of all the changes, because I had to for work. This, I felt, gave me an edge on any stock broker, online stock trading or online trading.

I separated the sectors.

There was surface transportation, air transportation and sea transport.

All three had their troubles at the time, especially surface. There were a number of the old line surface hauling companies that were suffering. They were facing stiff pricing competition from upstarts, which didn’t have the same costly overhead to deal with. These newcomers, in-itially, were eating the established trucking companys’ lunch. In fact, they were eating the breakfast, lunch and the dinner.

Eventually, the industry consolidated, and put pressure on the upstarts and through pricing and good infrastructure, managed to eliminate many serious challenges. Once the industry consolidated, it made choosing winners and losers much easier.

Even those companies are cyclical; they still represented decent buys, especially at the low point of the cycles. The survi-vors would and could weather the storm and will be around even during the bad times.

Rail transport, as a sub sector of transportation, had already undergone major consoli-dations, so it was just a matter of looking very closely at the ba-sics, such as Price/Earnings ratio and Cash Flow Analysis. Once the technology bubble dust settled and the housing bubble began, it was easy to see that rail transport would be a winner, as materials for the building had to be moved, and rail is still one of the most economical ways to do it.

Air transportation was trickier to pick winners and losers, especially after September 11.

I made one bad choice, where the carrier went kaput, and I lost all on it. The second selection was much better, as it was a budget carrier and had been long established. Plus, the carrier hedged its fuel options and negated the rising cost of jet fuel as a factor in over all costs.

Sea or Ocean transport is very much a global industry. There are a number of very big players and market leaders, and once again it was a matter of just examining the fundamentals and looking at where the areas were for expansion.