It’s clear that the company is redoubling efforts to strengthen itself and build a competitive advantage. Anything that distracts the management from doing just that will be de-emphasized. The sale of its National Tire and...

There’s no point in chasing sales if you’re losing money on those sales.

[Retail sales have gone up and down all year, but we won’t fully understand what’s going on in the minds of American shoppers until the last Christmas gift has been unwrapped. The holiday shopping season...

Retailers that are not catering that well to the middle- and upper-income customers are going to have a tough time.

Investors have been skeptical about the health of the U.S. consumer, and will use this to take profits.

Department stores are already focusing on rejecting shipments from vendors that they ordered. They are also looking to promote inventory they already have in hand. As we get through the season, department stores are going...

The company endorsed consensus analysts’ estimates of a 15 percent EPS growth in the new fiscal year,

The sales results from the department and discount chains were mostly in line with expectations.

They are admitting they have very cloudy visibility on the very critical holiday season. What might be more significant to investors is that even though they had an admittedly superb second quarter, where are we...

The announcement by Neiman Marcus…makes us as concerned as we have ever been that this Christmas will be extremely lackluster, … It appears now the high-end consumer is beginning to scale back their purchases, which...

They’ve learned the lessons from last year and are intent upon not repeating the same mistakes.

There has been real concern for the last several months about hurricanes, about consumer sentiment, about gasoline inflation hurting consumer spending,

Discount stores have really become an increasing portion of consumers’ expenditures. Now there’s talk of fluctuating energy prices, job layoffs, and people are looking for the best value possible. So we believe the discount stores...

Wal-Mart’s EPS growth is twice that of the S&P. For the third consecutive year it has seen an increase in operating margins and we believe it still has tremendous growth opportunity over the next 5...

I think there’s a lot of confusion about the state of the consumer. We had weak numbers in January. February sales were pushed down by horrible weather, and now March could be weak because of...

The news we got today was incrementally negative, even for the best operators out there. And clearly this does not bode well for a strong holiday season.

It’s pretty well accepted that the economy is gradually building momentum, and Kmart has declared bankruptcy,

Is all this a solution for the bigger concerns of the American consumers or the local gas station owner? No. But it is an example of the company trying to show its heart in the...

Wal-Mart is a more mature company today and is showing its willingness to be more open with the press, … From investors’ point of view, this is very good news. All the negative publicity has...

It’s clear that [Wal-Mart] is going to offer very sharp price [discounts] to drive customer traffic. While [fourth-quarter] sales will be respectable, the lower prices necessary to drive traffic will filter through to earnings that...

We believe our competitors have shown irrational exuberance with Christmas forecasts, … We believe the average consumer is worried about higher gasoline prices, jobs and doesn’t believe he will benefit from the stock market. With...

The shopper appears to be in mid-season form with the holiday season just having started.

It could have been a lot worse given the expectations. We had lackluster sales through the spring, through summer, terrorist attacks, and a recession, so an increase of 1 or 2 percent is decent. The...

I think it all comes down to Wal-Mart’s aggressive advertising campaign, … They are being much louder with their campaign, and I think they’ve done a good job of stealing the ‘early-bird’ holiday shoppers.

The companies that are seeing strong gross margin improvements are getting it not from improving their merchandising mix, but from improved buying. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Target are lowering their cost of acquiring products. Sears...

We’re not out of the woods yet. Forty percent of holiday sales are wrapped up in the week before Christmas.

Despite higher gasoline prices, Wal-Mart was able to raise guidance for the second-quarter which is particularly noteworthy because that’s also the period that they will have to deal with the lion’s share of the gas...

We believe this update is a combination of management’s typical conservatism and sales sluggishness from the unusually warm weather,

Kohl’s is having a major disconnect with its customers, … The company’s inventory growth is outpacing sales and I think their problems will continue into the fourth quarter and even the first quarter next year.

It was a mixed bag, … What we got again, as we did in December, is this separation of winners and losers.