The bifurcation hiding in the blended average

The "Data Center: Logistics, Telecom & Adjacent" bucket's flat 30-day return conceals two very different stories. The 9-name freight core — rails UNP, NSC, CSX; LTL players ODFL, SAIA, XPO; and truckload/leasing names JBHT, R, WSC — sits uniformly in mildly bullish or strongly bullish bands as of July 28, with no member downgraded to a bear band in the trailing 30 days. Strongly bullish streaks for CSX, JBHT, ODFL and NSC all began within a tight mid-to-late-April window (CSX on April 17, JBHT on April 20, ODFL on April 15, NSC re-entering on April 28 after a brief whipsaw), pointing to a genuine cohort inflection rather than a handful of names carrying a mixed group. Over the past 30 days, UNP is up 9.7%, NSC up 8.3%, and CSX up 6.7%, even as JBHT, SAIA and WSC have pulled back modestly.

The drag comes from the bucket's non-freight legs. CCOI and SYM sit in strongly bearish bands, alongside T and TMUS, with VZ in mildly bearish. CCOI alone is down roughly 73% over the trailing year following Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 revenue misses, a dividend cut, and net leverage above 8x, far worse than anything in the freight names. That single collapse, not a freight rollover, is what flattens the headline 30-day average.

What the freight data actually shows

The fundamentals lean toward a real, capacity-driven cycle turn. Rail volumes hit record weekly intermodal levels in June, up 11.7% year-over-year, with Q2 carloads up 2.3%. The ATA tonnage index posted its sixth straight month of annual growth in May, and spot truckload rates are up roughly 31% year-over-year with tender rejections near 13%, the tightest capacity signal since early 2022. That tightness traces partly to English-proficiency and CDL enforcement actions that have sidelined roughly 20,000 drivers and revoked ~28,000 licenses, a supply-side shock rather than a demand boom.

The picture is uneven, though. Cass freight expenditures rose 11.2% in June, but the shipments component fell 4.1% year-over-year, meaning much of the gain is pricing, not volume. LTL is split the same way: Saia's tonnage per workday rose as much as 8.4% in May on genuine share gains, while Old Dominion's tons per day still declined year-over-year even as yield rose 5.4%. And the UNP-NSC deal remains a slow-moving regulatory process — the STB accepted the revised application in May with supplemental filings still underway and no close expected before 2027 — so it isn't a near-term price catalyst.

The freight core's bull streak looks real and broad-based rather than a merger-arb sideshow, but it's a capacity-tightening story more than a volume boom, and the bucket's blended optics are being distorted by unrelated telecom weakness.