by Gary Alexander
December 2, 2025
Many of us with a long history of following the economic newsletter community devoured the superb writings of Richard Russell (1924-2016) in his “Dow Theory Letters,” published from 1958 until his death. He had either a bull or bear “in the box” (on page 1), based on his interpretation of the Dow Theory, that the Dow Industrials and Dow Transports must be heading up together for the bull market to earn “the box.” His theory, based on decades of research, posited that it isn’t enough to make the goods (via the industrials), but those goods also have to reach markets (be “transported”) to complete the sale.
Like the Dow Industrials, the Transports bottomed out last April 7th (at 12,470), and the Transports have actually beaten the Industrial’s gains since then – up 33% (DJT) vs. 30% (DJI), so the “bull is in the box.”
Twenty stocks in the DJT cover an array of transportation methods: 5 airline-related stocks, 4 by car or truck, 3 by rail, 2 by sea, and the rest in “logistics,” using several media. This, of course, reminds me of the changing nature of the dominant transportation methods in two centuries of industrial evolution.
The Dominant Transportation Industries from 200, 150, 100 and 50-years ago
— Canals, Rails, Roads and Airlines (is Space Next?)
When it comes to transportation, moving people was always a secondary concern to the monetary motivation of moving merchandise to market, quicker and safer. At the birth of the Industrial Revolution, canals were hot stocks, but the birth of major rail lines delivered the major gains of the 19th century:
1-Canals: The Erie Canal officially opened for business 200 years ago, on October 26, 1825, with a grand celebration marking the first trip from Buffalo to New York City. The waterway was completed after eight years of construction – the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes.
The Erie Canal ran 363 miles, dropping 555-feet through 83-locks. It was 40-feet wide, four-feet deep and dug entirely by hand. Creating such a canal was like a “moon shot” that everyone thought would take decades, but New York Governor DeWitt Clinton sounded like JFK when he said in 1817, “The day will come in less than 10 years when we will see Erie water flowing into the Hudson.” The Canal was funded by a mania in canal securities, a phenomenon which put the young New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the map, but canals were limited in the amount and speed of delivering cargo from maker to market.
At the Grand Opening, a series of cannon signals were shot off along the entire route. These cannons announced the canal’s first ship from Buffalo to New York City. It lasted for 90 minutes at consecutive canal ports. The New York City culminating cannon was also celebrated with a “Wedding of the Waters” ceremony, in which New York governor DeWitt Clinton poured a keg of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic.
2-Railroads: Even before the Erie Canal opened, Britain gave the world its first rail line, in the form of a 25-mile route (Stockton to Darlington and back) on September 27, 1825. America was not far behind. Just three years after the Erie Canal opened, New York granted a charter to the Great Erie Railroad to run a 483-mile line from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, then Chicago – clearly faster than human-hauled boats.
At about the same time, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) was formed in 1828, operating in stages from 1830 to 1987, when it merged into a larger system. The B&O was founded in Baltimore to serve merchants who wanted to do business with settlers over the Appalachian hump. The B&O opened humbly in 1830 with a 13-mile line between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mill, Maryland, replacing horse drawn carts.
By the 1880s, 50 years later, rails dominated over 60% of the New York Stock Exchange capitalization:
3-Cars and Trucks: A century ago, automobile stocks were all the rage on Wall Street, with dozens of high-flying roadsters gaining headlines before crashing and burning, gobbled up by the Big Three by the end of the 1930s. One emblem of this transformation happened a century ago, when the first motel (motor hotel) opened on December 12, 1925. The Motel Inn was located in San Luis Obispo, California.
By 1955, automobiles dominated American life. 1955 was called “The Year of the Automobile,” as Detroit produced seven million passenger cars, over a million more than in any previous year. In two-signs of this hubris, marking a top, on January 17, 1956, Ford went public for the first time…and designed the Edsel.
4-Airlines: 1955 was also the year when more people traveled by air than train, and by 1957 airlines had replaced ocean liners as the primary means of crossing the Atlantic, so now we move transport into the air:
Several airline companies first entered the competition for manic market traders in the 1920s. As the speed, power and carrying capacity of these airlines kept increasing, we reached what some felt was a ridiculous extreme 50 years ago with the first commercial flight of a supersonic transport (SST).
The first SST, the Tupolev Tu-144, debuted 50 years ago on December 26, 1975, carrying mail (not passengers) from Moscow to Alma-Ata. The first commercial SST was the Concorde, launched a month later, on January 21, 1976. The SST traveled at Mach 2.0, or 1350-miles per hour, crossing the Atlantic in 2.5 hours, not 8 to 10 hours, but they cost a fortune to fly and caused sonic booms, and environmental threats, so they soon fell out of favor. Today 18 of the 20 original SSTs are in various air travel museums.
5-Space? Even before SSTs arrived, America grew weary of space travel after six missions and a dozen pairs of boots tramped on moon dust. The last manned mission to the moon was Apollo 17, launched on December 7, 1972. It landed on the moon four days later, with its Commander Gene Cernan being the last person to walk on the moon, with the mission concluding in splashdown on earth December 19, 1972.
Four of the 12 men who walked the moon are alive, all in their 90s, including Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin, so let me close by honoring two moon-walkers I have met, the first when we lived in Reston, Virginia, and he came to launch the first school named after him. Buzz Aldrin (born January 1930), our oldest living astronaut, walked the moon along with Neil Armstrong in 1969 on Apollo 11. I’d also like to pay homage to Bill Anders, who lived on nearby Orcas Island. He lost his life last year flying a tricky aerial maneuver at age 90 over his beloved islands, hoping to show off some for friends. Bill and Valerie Anders were also instrumental (no pun intended) in funding and running the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, where we members heard the premier of the Earth-rise string quartet (with musical saw) honoring his 1968 photo.
Imagine advancing from the Wright Brothers’ 120-foot flight in 1903 to moon shots and SSTs just 70-years later. That tells us our creativity and drive toward further and faster transportation will never die.
Transportation breakthroughs in the 1820s and 1920s revolutionized commerce, so: What could 2025 mean in the history of transportation? Let me guess, taking a tip from our over-reach in the 1970s – in the form of multiple moon shots and SST needle-jets. I foresee long air travel will start to shrink: We will travel less, partly due to the nightmare of airports and airplane travel – in an industry that seems to create more misery than magic. I foresee that net air and car miles will begin to shrink, which is good news for the environment. We will keep shopping more by the internet, with product delivery to our doors, so the next breakthrough in travel could be ZOOMING more and flying less – asking: “Is this trip necessary?”
I own only one of the 20 DJT stocks – it’s a commercial airline stock, the best of the litter, in my view, but I’m not excited about that industry, so I’m thinking of selling this net loser in exchange for a DJT stock that profits more by using the logistics of delivering commercial goods to market – like to my front door.
Navellier and Associates; do not own Ford Motors (F), in managed accounts. Gary Alexander does not personally own Ford Motors (F).
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