. . .I believe those institutional and large investors are starting to buy more and more stock in UPS especially since Warren Buffett himself started buying UPS stock a year or two ago . . . In addition, the fact that FDX sends out two drivers for every business that has both air and ground pieces is hugely inefficient and costly compared to UPS as shown in the fact that big brown is now clearly beating them in the competition for domestic volume and in spite of the enormous benefit that FDX has in costs by paying billions and billions of dollars less for benefits and pay for its people. Without a new union contract no longer looming over UPS, (and their recent announcement that they will buy back another two billion dollars worth of stock) look for their share prices to soar. Buy UPS- sell FDX.
__________
Institutional investors are not following Warren Buffet. In reference to the stock comparisons, the best bet is to learn how to read a balance sheet. Say away from long and short and buyback gossip, and concentrate on hard reportable data regulated by law. This is the only way to hold the company accountable.
As for Fedex sending out two drivers, compared to UPS sending out one driver. One of the big differences in such strategies is that UPS has one driver, one revenue stream (per route) and one expense, while FedEx has two drivers, two revenue streams (routes) and one expense. Don't forget, the FedEx ground driver is "independent" and picks up a good part of the operational expenses.
When the local fedx ground guy went on vacation last year, his replacements (people that work for the Indy contractor not FedEx proper) did not pick up for three days. So much for reliability.
UPS has always had significantly more domestic ground business than FedEx. Domestic ground is the bread and butter / cornerstone of UPS. As a matter of fact, the company knows it is too heavily weighted in domestic ground and that is one of the reasons for trying to expand the company into the category of an integrator. The question is, what rate of growth has the FedEx ground sector experienced since their ground service was started and its projections for future growth? Their ground service is steadily growing last time I saw research.
If you review the FedEx annuals for the past couple of years, you can see they report a cumulative growth that is greater than the S&P500 and the Dow Jones Transportation Average. Naturally, it will take an earthquake in Memphis to upset fedex investors.