This is what New Mexico looked like during the building of its first railroad line.
Blasting a path through the mountains to lay track took a huge and costly cooperative effort by hundreds of people. The owners of the rail companies were visionaries, dedicated to moving goods in a much faster and more efficient way than by stagecoaches.
Of course, trains led to train robberies. Still, the overall danger of getting from point A to point B lessened appreciably thanks to the railroad.
Charles Dow created the Transportation index in 1884. It is the oldest stock index still in use, even older than its better-known relative, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).
As an oldie but goodie, I use it as a lead indicator among the one index and other four sectors of the economic Modern Family.
While Granddad Russell 2000 soared to a new all-time record high early today, Transportation as seen through the ETF IYT, tried but could not make it to new highs.
Should the bulls worry?
The top holding in IYT is FedEx (FDX).
The top 10 holdings are made up of air freight, railroad, and trucking companies.
FedEx (FDX), unlike IYT, spent several weeks below the 50-week moving average up until late July, when the price traded back above it.
IYT has not closed a week under the 50-week MA since the week of June 24th, 2016.
Last week, after IYT made a new all-time high to 206.90, it sold off leaving a topping price pattern. However, it held the fast moving average and 200, the key support area.
This week thus far, IYT made an intraday high of 206.43.
It settled at 205.67.
That makes our work fairly simple.
205.25 was the low on the day IYT made the new all-time high. Therefore, that level becomes the pivotal price point.
I use the word “pivotal” a lot to describe certain price levels.
I use pivotal levels for both daily and longer-term macro views of the market and/or a particular instrument.
With IYT, above 205.25, the bias remains friendly, although it still needs to clear the ATH of 206.90 to negate the topping pattern.
