Investores buy the Blue Chips

 10/22/2026

Thursday AM CST 10/22/2026

The Transportation Index leads the DOW Averages. It is up 241 points today thanks to 6% advances in CSX railroads and Ryder trucking.  The Industrials gave back some of yesterday’s gains. Yes, both indexes made higher highs earlier this year. The sell-off of so many stocks which are not tech wonders has the buy the dip crowd, well, buying.

The semi-conductor SOX index resumes its sell off down 5.67% today. The tech heavy NDX is off -2.39% as a result. Investors are leaving high tech and buying more traditional stocks. CSX and Ryder are good examples of just that.

Crude oil is up $1.43 to $98.58. However, that is not helping the energy ETF XLE. It dropped 1.86% today. Worse, the Energy Service XES got knocked down 6.65%. Yikes, my page of energy service stocks is all red, down, no exceptions. The leaders Halliburton HAL and Schlumberger SLB both down about 4%.

The ten-year Treasury note has dropped another notch to 5.01%, down 2.5% since yesterday. The trendline on the yield chart is a hair over 4.87%. That should make for a good near term target for the ten-year rate.

 Social Mood - politics 

i live in a Republican voting neighborhood but Talarico DEM signs are sprouting all around.  I have only seen one Paxton REP sign in the entire neighborhood. That is hardly a statistically significant survey. But sometimes anecdotal statistics can be accurate.

Dems promise to impeach Defense Secretary Hegseth. This looks like a repeat of 1973 with Hegseth as Nixon. Back then the media was all negative on Nixon as they have been on Trump.  Hegseth is next.

Trump cut loose his new press secretary after five days. He cancelled his Greek ambassador appointed September 29, 2025.She lasted a few days past a year.  Will he hold on to Hegseth in the face of investigations and dig in?  Or let Hegseth go the way of the Greek ambassador, we’ll see.

This is not a political column.  But massive negative investigations will not bode well for the market. In 1973-4 the DOW dropped 50% in eighteen months.

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