(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) Josh — Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves a float shrinker! Old Dominion (ODFL) checks literally every box for me. It’s in the right sector, it’s in the right industry group, it’s acting better than all of its peers, it’s buying back stock and investing aggressively during temporary setbacks for its business. This is a strong stock getting stronger with improving fundamentals coinciding with the rally in price. Observing the way this name behaved during the recent AI scare for trucking and logistics stocks, you can see that it didn’t take much for the buyers to come back in. We like. Sean’s going to tell you the story and I will be back with a chart. Best Stock Spotlight: Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (ODFL) Sean — The transports and companies involved in freight specifically have had a volatile decade. The pandemic caused one of the biggest booms in freight ever. The “Cass Freight Index” expenditures component — which measures total dollars spent on freight across North America, exploded 38% in 2021 and another 23% in 2022. Carriers literally could not keep up. Once these carriers caught up with demand, spent capital on more equipment, invested in more employees, etc., it all reversed. Consumers rotated to services instead of goods, and freight volumes have dropped ever since. Freight expenditures fell 19% in 2023 and 11% in 2024, followed by another decline of 6.1% in 2025 according to Cass Information Systems, which tracks this freight data. Old Dominion’s own numbers tell the clearest story of what a freight recession looks like. Tonnage (total weight transported) peaked at 10,211 thousand tons in 2022 and has fallen every year since, reaching 8,177 thousand tons in 2025, a level below where the company was in 2018. Three years of volume decline have erased essentially all of the growth from 2019 to 2022. However, ODFL did not cut costs, shore up defenses, and hunker down for freight-winter. They took this industry-wide phenomenon as an opportunity to take market share. ODFL invested $2B in Capex focused on their service centers and fleet. They are currently running a network designed to handle 55,000 shipments a day but are shipping about 40,000, leaving 35% of capacity unused. These are known as fixed costs — the service centers, trucks, drivers, and technology that Old Dominion has already built and paid for. When freight volumes recover and shipments start filling that network back up, every incremental ton of freight flowing through an already-built system drops to the bottom line at a high margin. Throughout all three years of volume decline, Old Dominion never cut prices to chase tonnage (volumes). Revenue per shipment excluding fuel surcharges was up 4.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, even as volumes were still falling. That matters for the recovery because competitors who discounted through the downturn now face the difficult task of repricing customers upward when freight tightens. Old Dominion walks into the recovery with its pricing fully intact, a network that is larger than anyone else’s, and a service reputation (99% on-time delivery) setting industry standards. Lastly, ODFL is utilizing the old AAPL playbook, too. Check out their shares outstanding: Even through three consecutive years of volume declines, Old Dominion deployed $4.33 billion in share repurchases since 2020, shrinking the diluted share count by 10.7%, which cushioned the earnings-per-share decline by roughly 5 percentage points relative to what net income alone would have suggested. When freight recovers and earnings grow, that same shrinking denominator works in reverse. This past quarter, management laid out a target scenario where earnings would grow roughly 56%, but earnings per share would grow 65%, a 9 percentage point amplification coming from capital discipline through the downturn. This fiscal and operational discipline has the market excited, as the stock is nearing 52-week highs. Now here’s Josh on the technicals reflecting this story… Risk management Josh — When the whole sector pulled back over nonsensical AI concerns it held up better than all of its peers. This is what it means to be a Best Stock in the Market. Over the last two weeks, while the sector got hammered, ODFL held firm near 193 and never even threatened the rising 50-day at 172, showing clear relative strength. The prior shakeout respected that same 50-day level and stayed well above the 200-day at 156, which tells you the intermediate trend remains intact. As long as it’s above 172 this is digestion, not damage, and it would take a decisive break of 156 to argue the uptrend has truly changed. Traders can use the rising 50-day as their pivot point. DISCLOSURES: (None) All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL’S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ABOVE CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES. BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS, YOU SHOULD STRONGLY CONSIDER SEEKING ADVICE FROM YOUR OWN FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. 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