Let's Retire the FedEx Barometer Cliche

3/20 - "FedEx Corp (FDX) is having a tough morning, having barometerannounced a 6% drop in third-quarter earnings and - perhaps more ominously - also disclosed that neither the fourth quarter nor next year look particularly rosy. That kind of talk gets a lot of jaws flapping, on the premise that shipping companies possess on-the-ground data about how businesses are really doing."

"The problem with the barometer metaphor is this: an actual barometer...can give you pretty reliable weather forecasts over a 12- to 48-hour period. But it can’t tell you a darn thing about what’s going to happen next week or next month."

"...if there were macroeconomic predictive powers in FedEx’s stock performance, they ought also to show up in UPS (UPS) stock. But UPS’s performance has been dramatically different - it peaked in mid ‘06, and has yet to recover from the precipitous decline that summer."