I'm also confused about this. By all accounts, investing in shld is essentially making a bet that lampert will make spectacular business decisions/changes/acquisitions. The selling of property is essentially a one time gain (sooner or later they'll run out). What they do with the money from the sales is unknown. The kmart stores are still empty. Perhaps they can save some money by sharing kmart/sears distribution channels. Anyways, I don't see the growth in this company. But I also wouldn't short it cuz that real estate should provide atleast short term gains. However, the one extremely strong point is that Lampert's hedge fund is heavily heavily (i cant recall but i think it was over 50%) invested in shld so you know that he has an incredible stake in making sure the share price keeps going.
If they sell all the best locations... they're left with crap. There must be some kind of derivative play in here. SHLD also has a negative beta... odd. Me thinks it's just a really large pump and dump scam with Lampert making money on the way up and down. There also seems to be huge open positons in the January 06 and 07 options.
Cramer thinks that SHLD could be the next BRK.A and that Lampert is the Buffet of this generation. We'll see.
cramer has said that a bunch of times, although being called the next buffet and actually being the next buffet is completely different. Not to get off on a cramer tangent, but he also said "buy just one share and hold". he also said that about goog a while ago (i haven't watched his show in about 3 months so I'm not up to date on current cramer). i think the 'just one share' comment makes no sense, because if he really believes in shld/goog, he should be telling his audience to load the boat (I believe in his book he says something to the effect that if you've got a sure thing, you've got to be willing to go all in), and also just one share takes away 5-10% right off the bat in commissions.
I think the "just one share" comment was in reference to people who can't get over the high dollar price of those stocks. ie. 1 share at $150 is the same as 10 shares at $15. Then again, if these people are too dumb to do basic math they shouldn't even own 1 share. This is why BRK.A has never split. It weeds out at least a few idiots from the shareholder base.
lol not surprised @ Cramer. My plan was to buy SHLD when it hit the 200 day MA, and today it did, so I bought it. I know there is a small gap intraday near $140+. We shall see.
I'd watch open interest on the options mentioned above like a hawk if i had anything longer than an hour trade on. Could the retailers be holding up b/c gross margins will increase drastically ? Cheap products made by cheaper labor. EDIT: cheerful that one can buy $7 sneakers for his daughters at wal-mart...those sneakers cost $.70 to produce for the companies involved but many generations after us will pay a far higher cost with respect to the environmental and human injustices that take place to make $7 sneakers. Can i get an Amen....