Retail Stocks and the Potential Lump of Coal

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My parents are visiting in town for the week so I probably won't be posting much more in the next couple of days. I'll try to sneak in a few posts when I have some spare time. Anyway, while they were in town we dropped by a very popular mall in the morning.

Sounds like a pretty boring post so far right? Well, guess what? The mall wasn't nearly as busy as it was in previous year's Boxing Days. This leads me to believe that there is a serious drop in consumer spending. If you think things are bad in Canada, things are even worse in the USA. I watched NBC news this evening and they talked about how empty the malls are.

I can't replay footage of NBC news on here, but picture this. A camera panning left and right in a normally busy mall in suburban USA. The mall is empty. The J Crew on the left and the GAP on the right are virtually empty. It's a ghost town here folks!

I know that Americans don't celebrate Boxing Day, but in the past they are known to spend their Christmas cash between the end of Christmas and New Year's. Unfortunately you know what this means? Stocks that were overbloated, hyped, and had GREAT outlooks moving into the Christmas quarter may be in for a serious rude awakening. I guess when the sales reports come out for this quarter, we'll know truly how great the quarter is. I could be wrong, but I'm predicting that things won't be looking too good.

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