I’m convinced that if the old me met the new me, he’d want to slap me. But then again, the new me is getting paid. The old me waited for a $20 handout at the end of the week from his father.

Back to the topic at hand – take a look at the sector of the S&P 500 did the best this past year…

If you’ve just looked at this chart of the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLP) and thought to yourself “that doesn’t look good at all”, you’re not alone.

After all, you still would have lost about 15%. But you didn’t lose nearly as much as you would’ve had you put your money in any other sector.

For instance, you would have lost 32% had you put your money into the Energy Select SPDR (NYSE:XLE) instead. And the Financials Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLF) did dreadfully worse, losing about 68%.

The fact that the consumer staples have weathered this recession the best so far means that when things get better, they could be the first sector headed higher.

This from Taipan Daily:

Circuit City is really dead this time. They’ve had troubles in the past. In fact, they’ve threatened to go belly up most every time the economy stalls a bit. But this go round they have sold out down to bare walls, and then padlocked the doors.

You won’t be able to get overpriced junk from the Sharper Image anymore. Or cheap junk from Lillian Vernon for that matter. The recession has slain them both.

No more sheets and towels from Linens ‘n Things. And possibly none from Bed Bath and Beyond, if things don’t turn around soon: the country’s largest home furnishings dealer just announced its fifth consecutive quarter of failing profits.

Fifth Avenue Heartache

Way over at the other end of the retail scale, that ultimate Fifth Avenue icon, Tiffany’s, has confessed to a 35% drop in holiday sales at U.S. stores open at least one year. Squinting into 2009’s cold winter headwind as best he can, CEO Michael J. Kowalski is looking to cut both Tiffany’s profit forecast and any costs he can: “We believe these conditions will continue well into 2009.”

New York City may be taking it on the chin this year, what with all the damage Wall Street has done to itself. But NYC millionaires and the folks who wait on them hand and foot are not the only ones hurting. A recent regulatory filing reveals that Dallas-based Neiman Marcus is about to lay off some 3% of its workforce. It’s just so damn hard to sell 35lb. diamond-encrusted watches when oil is at $45 a barrel.

Suddenly even the mighty, mighty Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), the one company you couldn’t short, the “recession-proof” champ of hard times, is coming up short and being downgraded by all and sundry.

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Squinting Through One Eye in the Land of the Blind

Seems like most all these retail behemoths are stumbling about like blind men on the edge of a precipice. In fact, there is only one outfit in recent memory that has had any good news at all. Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) claims that not only did it survive “Le Deluge,” but this last holiday season was its “best ever!”

Now, I know that Amazon has certain advantages over other retailers. First off, it does not need to employ sullen English majors to stock display shelves or pay desperate mall managers rent, utilities and 10% of every sale.

It probably has the best “just in time” inventory system in the world. If sales slow down on an item, it simply back-orders and draws on the publisher’s inventory. Heck, if it thinks a book is a total dog, it just resells used copies.

And Amazon’s not just about books anymore these days. You can buy most anything from them, from fur coats to blenders to, well, 35lb. diamond-encrusted watches.

Which brings us to the nub of the problem. I don’t care how well you control costs… selling stuff – any kind of stuff – for a profit in a recession this deep and this prolonged is a tough row to hoe.

The Cost of Survival

When Amazon floated their “best ever” holiday sales announcement, the company’s shares skyrocketed. But I must say that I was rather puzzled. I don’t doubt that Amazon knows its sales figures, what with the aforementioned stellar computerized inventory control and all. I just doubt whether they made but so much profit doing it.

I suspect that, when Amazon announces earnings on the evening of Jan. 29, we will discover that it was forced to purchase that volume with much lower margins. Current expectations hold that Amazon’s annual sales will come in around $6.5 billion, making for a 15% increase over 2007. Now that’s a mighty feat in a crappy year. But I expect earnings to come in down about 14% quarter-over-quarter.

Last I checked, Amazon was sitting on some $2 billion in cash, so they can afford to buy customers for a while yet before they come up short. But Amazon’s forward P/E is already somewhat ferocious at 35.54. What’s more, that P/E presumes that Amazon will manage to maintain earnings growth.

When AMZN announces that earnings have stumbled, I expect shares to stumble some $10 to $20 as well. Needless to say, this makes them a candidate for either shorting or put options. Mid-dated at-the-money put options are currently featuring a delta of 0.39. A $20 drop would offer up 121% gains in short order.

Source: Amazon Stumbles in the Land of the Blind

This from Today’s Financial News:

They are falling like dominoes these days. Without help from Uncle Sam, many of the nation’s top businesses do not stand a chance. They are taking investors with them.

When Circuit City ( filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, investors believed there was an opportunity to restructure. They thought if they could find temporary protection from their creditors, holiday sales just might bring their company back from the brink of total collapse.

It didn’t happen.

Holiday sales across the board turned out to be as dismal as expected and today, Circuit City is paying the price. It is liquidating its assets and disappearing for good.

A short circuit blows the fuse

After negotiations between two potential buyers, creditors and what was once the second-largest specialty electronics retailer in the country failed, 30,000 employees are left without a job and four liquidation companies are charged with unloading the company’s inventory and assets spread throughout the 567 stores that remain open. The company already announced closures of nearly 160 of its outlets.

The New Year is just over two weeks old and the list of companies that will not see the year through is growing longer by the day. Earlier this week,  and Gottschalk’s entered bankruptcy protection.

Who is next is anybody’s guess.

I would keep a close eye on Bon-Ton Stores (NASDAQ:BNT). Since its headquarters is about four miles from my front door, I will let you share my front-row seat. Another company to watch is Borders (NYSE:BGP). Its debt load is starting to shake the company’s foundation. A lot of analysts are wondering how long it can take the stress.

What does this all mean? How are investors to react?

In the short-term, not a whole lot. You would have had to been living in an underground bunker to have not seen these headlines coming. The long-term outlook is where the big money will be made.

Over the last five years, “Big Box” retailers have been popping up one after the other, sometimes within a few miles of one another. In my home town, for instance, a new Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) was literally built right behind a Circuit City store, which was right beside an older family-owned electronics shop.

What this mean (or exemplifies, really) is the fundamental rules of economics and business are still at work, no matter how hard Washington tries to eradicate them. The strongest will pounce on the weaklings and dominate the marketplace.

Mother Economy will take care of business

A bubbly economy may have allowed the weak to thrive for a few years, but when things got tough, their lack of strength became obvious and now they are dropping one after the other.

For the companies that survive, today’s news is fantastic. Imagine what power Best Buy will have with one of its major competitors out of its way. Sure, the next few quarters are going to reek of decaying corpses as Circuit City’s inventory floods the market, but after that, I would love to see the competitor that can knock Best Buy off of its leadership perch. There is nobody in sight.

No matter how hard we try to force the rules of economics in our favor, Mother Economy always wins. She told us months ago things were getting too big. Instead of forcing consolidation ourselves, we waited until the economy did it the natural and most painful way. Now we are paying the price.

The situation will get better and the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction. They always do. When it happens, the survivors of this retail death march will be sitting atop a big pile of profits. Make sure you are one of them.

Source: Mother Economy wins: Another one bites the dust

More from Andrew at Investor’s Daily Edge:

We’re in a “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” economy. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

Our economy floats on the whims of the American consumer. When they feel confident about the future, they spend. The more they spend, the better the economy does. This is oddly true even if 80 percent of the spending is on goods from Asia.

Right now the American consumer isn’t feeling so confident and the economy is suffering as a result.

But if we spend more, we go more into debt. We’re already spending more than we make. And the more we go into debt, the more money goes to paying off that debt…

Money the country doesn’t have. Money we as consumers don’t have. Money that should be going into productive assets, not into the hands of our cash-rich lenders in Asia.

We’ve been spending beyond our means for a while. But nobody cared much as the economy was booming and people were profiting from multiple bubbles.

The rich were getting richer. But the middle class was also seemingly enjoying the fruits of an expanding economy – moving into bigger houses and spending more on everything.

But their incomes had become stagnant. It couldn’t last. And it didn’t.

Conspicuous consumption has retreated under mountains of debt and growing doubt about the future.

Several forces are at work, not the least of which has been the economy’s inability over the last three-and-a-half decades to appreciably reward households with growing income.

Annual Growth Rate of Real Income Across the Family Income Distribution: 1947 to 1973 versus 1973 to 2005

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables, Tables F-2, F-3 and F-6. Downloaded from http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/ incfamdet
on Feb. 26, 2008

The 50’s and 60’s brought great economic growth to the country. But it also benefitted Americans across the entire spectrum of economic classes – from the very poor to the very rich. The slowest-growing group back then? It was the top five percent. Their income grew by 2.3 percent – about a third slower than how the poorest fifth of the population fared.

From 1973 to 2005, the top five percent maintained the income growth rate they had managed in the previous couple of decades. Problem is, the other income groups fell way behind – led by the poorest income group whose income didn’t grow at all in real money terms.

The middle income group also saw a real slowdown in income growth from annual rates approaching three percent to rates of 0.4-1 percent.

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This clash of trends – stagnant income verses rising medical, education and housing expenses – should have ended the economic good times far before it did. It lasted this long because…

• The women. They entered the work force in increasing numbers beginning in the 70’s. It took a double-income family to maintain the lifestyle that a single-income family had so recently been able to afford.
• Deflation from imports. Very cheap gas from the Middle East (thanks to an undisciplined OPEC) and cheap goods from Asia (thanks to low wages that must have had Karl Marx rolling over in his grave) kept things affordable in the 80’s and 90’s.
• Credit card nation. Before there were credit cards, there were lay-away plans. If you couldn’t afford it, the store would take it off the shelves and “lay it away” until you saved up the money. Credit cards let people buy what they couldn’t afford. It also established a consumer mindset about cash which facilitated the housing boom, bubble and then crash.
• The housing equity windfall. Americans, especially the middle class, avoided facing their diminished status brought on by decades of underwhelming income growth by turning their houses into cash machines. Easy credit greased the way. Thank you, Alan.

It is a great irony that as the U.S. grew into the undisputed richest and most powerful country in the world, its middle class turned into an endangered species.

The prerogatives of a middle-class lifestyle are a nice home and car, medical care, and education for your children. This is not greed. This is the American Dream. The best thing about it is that supposedly you don’t have to be rich. A ticket into the middle class is all you need.

That dream is now drowning in debt.

Spending beyond your means isn’t some freakish trait of the American middle class. It scares the hell out of the Europeans or Chinese. The notion that American households don’t mind debt is preposterous.

Have you ever had a conversation with somebody who said, “Sure, I’m buried in credit card debt and under water with my mortgage but I don’t mind. I’m going to continue to spend to my heart’s content.”

It’s precisely because the middle class is deeply worried about its debt (and the economy) that they have substantially reduced spending. And it’s going to stay that way until the value of the houses they live in and the incomes they make start to go up again.

Politicians of both political parties have turned a blind eye to the fate of the American middle class for too long. It’s time the government steps up to the plate.

They should do so because the fate of American retailers relies on reviving the middle class. Except for low-end retailers like Mickie D’s, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and the super stores, the entire sector is suffering mightily from the wanton disabling of the American Middle Class.

Then there’s this: the American Dream will die if they don’t do something and do it sooner rather than later.

Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntingdon wrote: “Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. America is not a lie, it is a disappointment. And it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.”

There’s still hope for the American Dream. But it’s getting late.

Source: Is the American Dream Fading?

This from Today’s Financial News:

If you are a retailer, you are at the mercy of your suppliers. A bad decision by some CEO or marketing manager that you have never met will greatly affect your future profitability. The way a retailer defends his supply-chain inferiority will directly translate into his success.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is particularly good at managing its suppliers. In fact, the mega-retailer is so good at it, it does not have to manage its supply chain. It dictates it.

Sam Walton created this power through large-volume ordering, constantly demanding the lowest prices possible and diversifying his product line. If one supplier acts up, Wal-Mart simply replaces them. And because the company sells just about every product man has ever created, Wal-Mart can afford to weather out downturns in a few of its product lines.

In other words, if one of its suppliers goes bankrupt or consumers suddenly refuse to buy a certain brand’s products, Wal-Mart’s profitability does not disappear. The company has a well-diversified product line.

If Wal-Mart and its thousands of products are the best example, car dealerships have to be the absolute worst.

One product, one shot at success

Think about it. Most dealerships sell one, maybe two brands of cars. You go to one dealer for Fords (NYSE:F), one dealer for General Motors (NYSE:GM) and another for Toyota (NYSE:T). Buyers have lots of options and industry competition is huge, but individual dealers are at the utter mercy of countless variables outside their control.

Right now, the downturn in consumer spending, the lack of credit and the notion of bankruptcy in Detroit is driving potential buyers out of showrooms. Most dealerships are in dire financial situations.

Mike Jackson, the CEO of the country’s largest dealership, Auto Nation (NYSE:AN), says at least a thousand dealers will lock their doors this year and just as many, if not more, will follow next year. The only dealers that will escape unscathed are those that were smart enough to diversify their product offerings.

For example, Sonic Automotive (NYSE:SAH), one of the nation’s top dealerships according to sales, sells over 30 different brands in fifteen states. It also owns and operates 34 body shops. If the company is going to make it through this recession, its product diversity will be the only thing that gets it there.

Unfortunately, like so many of its competitors, Sonic has a horrid balance sheet. As of last quarter, it was sitting on well over one billion dollars worth of inventory. With just $7 million in cash, it will be interesting to see how it pays for that inventory.

If the company can find the capital to get itself through this downturn, it will be able to survive. But right now, few investors are willing to take any risks in the auto industry.

When we boil it all down, Sonic Automotive, Auto Nation, and the nation’s 21,000 other dealerships are at the mercy of Detroit, which is in the hands of Washington. A lot of things have to go right before investors should think about going long on the industry.

If you are an investor looking to take advantage of the market’s downturn and snag shares of the nation’s retailers at rock-bottom prices (which is a good strategy), be sure to choose the companies with diversified offerings that are not at the mercy of their suppliers.

Wal-Mart and its index-smashing performance is a great example of the opportunities that lie ahead.

Source: Retail Bottom Fishing: Will Auto Nation(NYSE:AH) or Sonic Automotive (NYSE:SAH) survive?

More from The Daily Reckoning:

A few months ago, we wondered what the surprise would be. Mr. Market always has some tricks up his sleeve. What must happen always happens, but never as you expect.

So when stocks started to slide and people began talking about a ‘soft landing for global growth’, we wondered where the surprise would be.

Now we know. The downturn has been much more violent than almost anyone imagined. And it’s beginning to look as though the long-term damage could be much greater too.

Remember, a correction is equal and opposite to the deception that preceded it. Where was the deception of the boom years most concentrated? In two places – the US and China.

Americans believed they could live beyond their means forever. China believed it could get rich by selling more and more manufactured items – even though its major customer couldn’t pay.

You’d expect the resulting suffering to be equal and opposite to the aforegone enjoyment too. That is, those who lived highest on the hog should fall the farthest, no? And those who benefited most from selling to these people should lose most money.

So far, we’ve seen the beginnings of these redressments. But probably only just the beginning. Some people in America have lost their houses… some have lost their jobs. Spending has begun to fall. But the typical American continues to enjoy a standard of living that most of the world’s people cannot afford – including most Americans.

It will get worse. The third quarter showed the biggest decline in consumer spending in 28 years.

This is a “balance sheet recession”, remember? Consumers, businesses, investors – all need to pay down debt and build up savings. This will mean a huge turnaround for everyone – especially consumers. They have to reduce their standards of living dramatically in order to save money. And especially the baby boomer consumers – who also have to sock away some cash for retirement.

Saving went out of style in the ‘90s… but it’s becoming very popular, very fast. We’re going to see national savings rates rise… back to nearly 10%… and maybe beyond. This is exactly what consumers need to do. Consumers need savings. But the trend is murder on a consumer economy. A 10% savings rate means about $1.3 trillion in money that is NOT spent every year. (That’s why Obama is going to have a $2 trillion budget deficit… more on that tomorrow.)

And here comes the bad news from the Wall Street Journal: “Retail Losses Sap a Jobs Safety Net.”

We’re not sure how you sap a safety net. But for millions of people, when budgets got tight, someone could always go to work as a clerk in a retail shop. The money was poor, but at least it was money. And it filled in the gaps. For retired people… students… part-time working spouses – retail employment was always there… a fallback position… a “safety net.”

But with sales collapsing, the safety net is on the hard ground. The complaint of working stiffs used to be that “good jobs” were hard to find. You could always find a ‘bad job’ – flipping burgers or stocking shelves. But jobs with health benefits and union wages were few and far between. Now, even bad jobs are getting hard to find.

Source:Delaying the Process of Correction

Stores like Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI) and Trader Joes are watching their customers head to low-cost competitors like Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Safeway (NYSE:SWY).

It is no surprise to see an ultra-cheap retailer like 99 Cents Only Stores (NYSE:NDN) climb its way to the sole spot on the list of companies reaching 52-week highs today. The global economic crisis has actually been the best thing to happen to the company’s share price in a long time.

The rationale behind the positive run is obvious. When the economy is in the gutter, consumers have less money to spend on the things they need. So they go to the cheapest retailer they can find.

A wino’s delight

When we need a toothbrush, why spend $4.99 on a fancy name-brand brush when you can get one for less than a buck?

Or how about cleaning supplies? Or stationary? 99 Cents Only even sells bottles of wine at its namesake prices.

Of course, 99 Cents Only is not the only ultra-cheap retailer doing well these days. Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) and Family Dollar (NYSE:FDO) are both multi-billion dollar companies making their investors money over the past few months.

While these companies may appear as an oasis in a desert of losses, investors need to use caution. All three stocks have gotten a lot of attention lately and are becoming overpriced.

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For example, after more than doubling its share price since July, 99 Cents Only has a price-to-forecasted-earnings ratio of over 30. If the next earnings report misses expectations by only a small margin, shareholders could be in for a sizeable drop.

Granted, sales have increased over the past three months and are likely to surge even higher during this quarter, but the competition is catching up. Traditional retailers, which are often slow to react to economic waves, are finally making moves to target consumers during a recession.

Eye-catching sales and incentives are drawing cash-conscious consumers back into retail stores. Beyond that, ultra-discounters do not offer all the products consumers require. They will still head to the more-expensive “big box” stores for their needs.

Consumers are changing their habits, leading savvy investors to follow. Track the trends and invest appropriately and you could be one of the traders celebrating a 52-week high today.

Source: Cheap date: 99 Cents Only Store (NYSE:NDN) hits 52-week high

If it doesn’t happen as one of the final acts of the Bush administration, it will happen as one of the first acts of the Obama one.

The question is, will it help the fast-falling auto industry?

It’ll help retailers. The overwhelming evidence is that the last round of stimulus checks helped pick up consumer spending in the second and third quarters.

But big-ticket retailers like auto dealers play in another sandbox entirely. Unless these checks have a couple of more zero’s than the previous ones, the auto industry’s fate is tied to getting another $25-billion loan package from the government.

The auto industry needs it. And from Obama’s latest statements, it looks like it will get it. And just in time.

The auto industry is getting battered from three trends…

1. A worsening global economic slowdown

2. A global credit crisis which has dried up lending (including for autos)

3. A strengthening dollar, which makes American cars more expensive in overseas markets

The numbers published last week on October sales were abysmal. Toyota (NYSE:TM) reported a 23 percent drop, Ford (NYSE:F) a 30 percent drop, GM (NYSE:GM) 45 percent and Chrysler 35 percent.

GM is burning cash so quickly it warned this past Friday it’ll run out of money during the first half of next year. It sounds like GM is in shock: “In my 27 years, I have never seen a month like this. It was like somebody turned off the lights in the month of October,” a GM official said.

The auto industry is in a free fall. September’s auto sales numbers were terrible. It showed a loss of 30 percent. October’s was worse. It showed a loss of 33 percent.

It’s bad and getting worse. By all means don’t go bottom-fishing in this sector now. If anything, shorting the sector makes much more sense.

Source: What’s Going to Stimulate Auto Sales?

This from Taipan Publishing:

’Tis the season of too damn many cocktail parties. I simply don’t have the stamina for so much small talk and gossip, and don’t much care for finger food – or weak drinks.

But this time of year they are simply unavoidable (i.e., my wife makes me go). And so, all too often, I am forced to put down my tumbler of 12-year old single malt and my dog-eared edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, abandon my armchair, and trade the comfortable sweater and slippers of the misanthrope for the sport jacket and slacks of the supposedly social.

Fortunately, human beings are unable to recall the sensation of pain (it’s true: look it up). And so most of these events are immediately forgotten. However, I attended such an odd gathering the other night that is has stuck in my mind.

It wasn’t exactly seasonal per se. Nor was it another of those “buying parties” wherein we are feted with Vienna sausage and crab dip while a dowager of indistinct age pitches time shares in Boca, jewelry or Tupperware party bowls. (I’m told that one such get together saw the demonstration of a line of risqué undergarments. However, I was not invited to that one. And it’s probably just as well.)

Getting Rid of Excess Baggage

In many ways, in fact, it was the harbinger either of a new age or perhaps the return to an older age. You see, the ladies were there not to buy, but rather to sell stuff. Specifically, excess gold jewelry.

Please keep in mind that I do not live in a poorer quarter. Our town’s historical Main Street has no pawnshops nestled amongst its antique dealers. (It does have a rather nice used bookstore, though, where I recently stumbled upon a lovely 1930 edition of Voltaire’sCandide.)

And yet, our hostess had invited an assessor of used gold items – a man prepared to dole out cash (checks really) for broken chains, undersized rings and mismatched earrings.

Having nothing to offer the gentleman beyond my wedding ring (and I am not that greedy – or stupid), I abandoned the living room to the ladies and joined the other spouses around the downstairs wet bar.

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The New “Rich”

Even here, I witnessed a marked shift in the conversation. Gone was the usual bragging about the size of one’s new house. So too, the crowing of recent market gains. (No shock there!) The horsepower of this year’s offering from Cadillac? Fuggeddaboudit!

Instead, the hot subject was the new frugality. One gent was touting how he could up his Honda’s gas mileage by coasting to stop lights. Another was alerting everyone to a large discount on driveway macadam from a building supplier in the next county.

A third fellow was all full of vinegar as to how he had just dressed down his teenaged daughter about her grades: “She won’t qualify for a college grant if she gets another B in economics.”

Even more disorienting: Suddenly, my hoary old scold (meant solely to discourage further financial inquisition) that “the best gain the average investor could hope to achieve could be had by paying off his credit cards” was the talk of the room!

Can it be that “cheap” is the new “rich?”

The American Wallet Snaps Shut

Certainly my neighbors are not unique. Gob-smacked by years of rising prices, the American wallet has finally snapped shut. Consumer spending in September fell some 0.3%, the largest single month drop in the past four years. Add in July and August, and you have the “worst” quarter in 28 years.

I have put quotes around worst, because the true historical value of this sea change has yet to be determined. We may be witnessing the demise of our great consumer culture.

This is disastrous news for those who are tied closely to the many endeavors that depend desperately on the American need for new crap.

Which companies might tumble when pointless spending falls from grace? Certainly the direct purveyors of chromed junk are already suffering mightily.

Detroit Still Can’t Buy a Clue

GM (NYSE:GM) and Chrysler are attempting to figure out which one has enough loose cash left to buy out the other. Borrowing for the deal in this ultra-tight credit market is simply out of the question.

Meanwhile, poor old Ford (NYSE:F) is still banking on selling one more generation of humongous pickup trucks to commuters and construction workers who aren’t even sure if they have a job to commute to.

And speaking of borrowing, GM’s once mighty (indeed sole) profit center, GMAC, is trying to redefine itself as a bank holding company so as to qualify for a piece of Washington’s trillion-dollar largesse.

The Only Profits in This Vast Empty Space

It appears that various other sellers of overpriced bric-a-brac and gewgaws are in the soup as well. The only players in the retail “space” who have shown any strength at all during this “season of saving” are Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and the 99 Cents Only Store (NYSE:NDN).

The rest, from high to low, Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) to Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS), are hemorrhaging red ink all over the New York trading floor.

Looking to the near term, most of American retail still looks like viable short candidates. My recommendation: Buy puts every time these guys poke their heads out of their little rat holes to spin their little tales of “better times coming in January.”

A Change in Values?

However, any old veteran of tighter times and previous ideas as to the value of thrift, might very well view the sudden decrease in spending, increase in wages, and spike in actual savings (Real savings! Remember them?) as a sign of better times to come.

Can you imagine a time when bankers were the type of men you could actually trust with your savings? Or how about a market that valued companies that actually made profits by providing genuinely valuable goods and services?

Goodness. The cherishing of True Value could even mean the end of shallow Technical Analysis!

Naaah: Never gonna happen.

Source: The Return of Real American Value?