Best Transportation Stocks to Buy in 2026

The article highlights Joby Aviation as a high-risk growth play, with analysts expecting revenue to rise from $53 million in 2025 to $458 million in 2028 as the eVTOL market grows at a projected 36.8% CAGR through 2034. Canadian National Railway is presented as the steadier option, with EPS expected to grow 8% CAGR from 2025 to 2028, a 2.3% forward dividend yield, and a valuation of 21x earnings. Overall, the piece is bullish on transportation stocks but is mainly opinion-driven commentary rather than a price-moving catalyst.

Analysis

The market is likely underestimating the asymmetry between a pre-revenue platform business and a cash-generative network asset. JOBY is a classic “optionality on execution” setup: the real inflection is not demand but certification-plus-manufacturing throughput, which means the stock can remain range-bound until a visible fleet ramp turns future revenue into a near-term operating model. That creates a two-stage rerating path: first on regulatory de-risking, then on utilization data; missing either step can compress multiple expansion quickly.

CNI, by contrast, benefits from a second-order reroute effect if North American trade frictions persist. Even if cross-border volumes soften, shippers tend to prioritize the most reliable trunk network, which can allow a large franchise to preserve pricing and mix while weaker carriers absorb the pain. The hidden risk is that a transcontinental competitor could force a service/price response before the benefits of CNI’s recent capex cycle fully show up in margins.

The consensus appears to be treating JOBY as a long-duration growth story and CNI as a defensive income name, but the better framing is volatility versus compounding. JOBY can work if one buys ahead of milestone compression; CNI works if one values it like a capital-light infrastructure proxy with optionality from freight normalization. The biggest miss is timing: the next 6-12 months likely matter more for multiple behavior than the next 3-5 years, because each name is carrying a different kind of execution risk.

A broader portfolio implication: the article implicitly favors logistics over software-adjacent AI exposure as the cleaner hedge against expensive growth-factor leadership. If risk assets wobble, CNI should hold up better than most cyclicals, while JOBY is likely to trade as a high-beta sentiment vehicle rather than a fundamentals story until commercial flights are clearly scaling.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long CNI on any 3-5% pullback over the next 1-3 months; target a 10-15% total return over 12 months via earnings resilience plus dividend support, with downside contained if freight volumes soften modestly.
• Buy a starter position in JOBY only on certification or launch-related weakness; treat it as a 6-12 month catalyst trade, not a core holding, because the stock is likely to re-rate violently around milestone headlines.
• Pair trade: long CNI / short UNP for 3-6 months if merger-related network expansion is seen as a competitive threat to CNI’s pricing power; the relative thesis is that CNI’s diversified lane mix is better insulated from a single-network response.
• If already long JOBY, finance upside with call spreads instead of outright shares; risk/reward improves if you express the view through 12-18 month calls where a commercialization surprise can dominate theta decay.
• Maintain a defensive logistics basket tilt versus high-multiple growth if the market starts de-rating AI winners; CNI is the cleaner ballast, with JOBY only as a small convex satellite position.