(That is The Finest Shares within the Market , delivered to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Administration.) Josh — Girls and gents, we received ourselves a float shrinker! Outdated Dominion (ODFL) checks actually each field for me. It is in the appropriate sector, it is in the appropriate {industry} group, it is appearing higher than all of its friends, it is shopping for again inventory and investing aggressively throughout non permanent setbacks for its enterprise. It is a sturdy inventory getting stronger with bettering fundamentals coinciding with the rally in value. Observing the best way this title behaved in the course of the current AI scare for trucking and logistics shares, you’ll be able to see that it did not take a lot for the consumers to come back again in. We like. Sean’s going to inform you the story and I will probably be again with a chart. Finest Inventory Highlight: Outdated Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (ODFL) Sean — The transports and firms concerned in freight particularly have had a risky decade. The pandemic brought on one of many largest booms in freight ever. The “Cass Freight Index” expenditures element — which measures complete {dollars} spent on freight throughout North America, exploded 38% in 2021 and one other 23% in 2022. Carriers actually couldn’t sustain. As soon as these carriers caught up with demand, spent capital on extra gear, invested in additional workers, and so forth., all of it reversed. Customers rotated to providers as an alternative of products, and freight volumes have dropped ever since. Freight expenditures fell 19% in 2023 and 11% in 2024, adopted by one other decline of 6.1% in 2025 in accordance with Cass Info Programs, which tracks this freight knowledge. Outdated Dominion’s personal numbers inform the clearest story of what a freight recession appears to be like like. Tonnage (complete weight transported) peaked at 10,211 thousand tons in 2022 and has fallen yearly since, reaching 8,177 thousand tons in 2025, a stage under the place the corporate was in 2018. Three years of quantity decline have erased basically all the progress from 2019 to 2022. Nonetheless, ODFL didn’t reduce prices, shore up defenses, and hunker down for freight-winter. They took this industry-wide phenomenon as a chance to take market share. ODFL invested $2B in Capex centered on their service facilities and fleet. They’re at present operating a community designed to deal with 55,000 shipments a day however are transport about 40,000, leaving 35% of capability unused. These are often called fastened prices — the service facilities, vans, drivers, and know-how that Outdated Dominion has already constructed and paid for. When freight volumes get well and shipments begin filling that community again up, each incremental ton of freight flowing via an already-built system drops to the underside line at a excessive margin. All through all three years of quantity decline, Outdated Dominion by no means reduce costs to chase tonnage (volumes). Income per cargo excluding gas surcharges was up 4.6% within the fourth quarter of 2025, at the same time as volumes have been nonetheless falling. That issues for the restoration as a result of rivals who discounted via the downturn now face the troublesome activity of repricing prospects upward when freight tightens. Outdated Dominion walks into the restoration with its pricing absolutely intact, a community that’s bigger than anybody else’s, and a service status (99% on-time supply) setting {industry} requirements. Lastly, ODFL is using the outdated AAPL playbook, too. Try their shares excellent: Even via three consecutive years of quantity declines, Outdated Dominion deployed $4.33 billion in share repurchases since 2020, shrinking the diluted share depend by 10.7%, which cushioned the earnings-per-share decline by roughly 5 share factors relative to what web earnings alone would have prompt. When freight recovers and earnings develop, that very same shrinking denominator works in reverse. This previous quarter, administration laid out a goal situation the place earnings would develop roughly 56%, however earnings per share would develop 65%, a 9 share level amplification coming from capital self-discipline via the downturn. This fiscal and operational self-discipline has the market excited, because the inventory is nearing 52-week highs. Now here is Josh on the technicals reflecting this story… Threat administration Josh — When the entire sector pulled again over nonsensical AI considerations it held up higher than all of its friends. That is what it means to be a Finest Inventory within the Market. Over the past two weeks, whereas the sector received hammered, ODFL held agency close to 193 and by no means even threatened the rising 50-day at 172, exhibiting clear relative power. The prior shakeout revered that very same 50-day stage and stayed effectively above the 200-day at 156, which tells you the intermediate pattern stays intact. So long as it is above 172 that is digestion, not injury, and it could take a decisive break of 156 to argue the uptrend has really modified. Merchants can use the rising 50-day as their pivot level. DISCLOSURES: (None) All opinions expressed by the CNBC Professional contributors are solely their opinions and don’t mirror the opinions of CNBC, or its guardian firm or associates, and will have been beforehand disseminated by them on tv, radio, web or one other medium. 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