Railroads VS the market

In an expensive market and in a world where Amazon changes everything, you must redefine what's attractive and what's not. You must take back the bad words you've said about Carmax, hoping nobody remembers you've said not so long ago that you hated that fucking stock. And you must also take back what you've said about railroads, which was something like "good but not good enough for me".

In fact, my 10 years in the stock market made me try lots of stocks and approaches. And all this time, railroads were like a quiet river running besides me while I was trying to find the highway to quick richness. And that quiet river made it's way in a straight way while I zig-zagged mine.

Perhaps that my poetry makes you face-palm yourself because if you wanted poetry you'd be reading some lyrics written by Bon Jovi.

Anyway, in north america, we have some excellent railroads, the best being probably Canadian National, Canadian Pacific and Union Pacific. I know a little bit more the first two (and I've owned them both in the past). They've never been involved in a scandal or some shit and they've done almost as good as your favorite small cap (MTY for instance).

Let's add that CNR and CP have had growing free cash flows over the last 5 years, which is a great achievement. They're surely among the 10 best businesses in Canada.

Both are selling for about 16 times next year's earnings. It's at least a fair price. The growth is not spectacular but it's steady and management have proven multiple times that they were there for shareholders (just take a look at the impressive buy backs for instance).

Warren Buffett has said something like: you won't get rich buying a railroad, but you'll stay rich.