Hello traders everywhere! Adam Hewison here, President of INO.com and Co-creator of MarketClub, with your mid-day market update for Thursday, the 22nd of August.
What is it with these hedge fund managers who think that because they have been successful in one field, they can now go into managing big retail brick-and-mortar stores?
In my opinion, part of it has to do with ego and part of it has to do with what I call "walk-on-water-itis." This ego symptom is when you believe that you can't do anything wrong and that you're gifted with special talents. That is what I think happened to both Bill Ackman, who took JC Penney (NYSE:JCP) down the toilet, and Eddie Lampert, who is doing a pretty good job of the same thing to Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD).
Why did Mr. Ackman and Mr. Lampert even get involved with these two aging American icons? In the process, these two hedge fund managers have lost millions of dollars of their investors' money playing in a playground they had zero expertise in. Today, Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD) reported disappointing earnings again, no surprise to anyone.
Mr. Ackman has pretty much acknowledged that his foray into JC Penney (NYSE:JCP) was a big, expensive mistake. I wonder if we will ever see Mr. Lampert fall on his sword and admit the same thing, I somehow doubt it.
It looks as though Meg Whitman's work is not even close to being finished, as she reshuffles the deck at Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) after posting an 8% drop in revenue as PC sales continue to slide.
In a statement, Whitman said, "I remain confident that we are making progress in our turnaround. We are already seeing significant improvement in our operations [and] we are successfully rebuilding our balance sheet." The only real business that HP has maintained has been selling those little ink cartridges, which has been very profitable for them. The stock had a nice run up this year and our Trade Triangles recently got us out of a long position in this stock at a very good point.
I will be looking at HP and other stocks, as well as all the other markets we track in my daily videos.
You can hear me talking about retail stocks in a recent interview I did on CNBC. You may enjoy hearing what I have say. Watch it here.
Have a great trading day,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub
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