In honor of Sears’ demise today, may I offer this short idea: the retail exchange-traded fund:
Retail Short
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
The Ghosts of Retail Past
When I was a kid, the “nice” store was Sears and the also-ran was JC Penney. You could kind of tell how nice a mall was by which one of those anchor stores they had. Well, that’s all ancient history now. You can see how these two former giants have ultimately followed each other together into oblivion.
Sector Focus: Food and Retail
Preface to all sector posts: This weekend I’m organizing charts in a different way. I’ve picked from my existing portfolio of live short positions and have grouped favorite shorts in specific sectors. Here are the selections for this group, and hopefully the markups will speak for themselves.
Go Big or Go Home
I’ve got a couple of real winners (that is to say, losers) in my world today – – DLTR, down about 10%, and BIG. I’ve suggested both as shorts many times, but I wanted to hit on BIG again, because I think it’s going to be a dynamite failure with much lower prices to come.
Years of WalMart Success
I’ve been mentioning recently how retail is one of the last remaining sectors to still look genuinely bullish. WalMart, the king of retail, proved this at the opening bell, vaulting nearly 10% higher (which, for a company this big, is as huge as its customers).
Retail Breaks to New Lifetime High
I now know something I didn’t know before – – or at least refused to believe. But now I’m a believer. There is no limit to how much crap people will buy in a desperate attempt to fill the void in their souls and desperately pile on credit card debt in a feckless bid for happiness. Keep buying, folks. Consumers will never be satisfied, and they will never stop buying.
Retail’s Strong Base
