A few weeks ago I took the family out to my old stomping grounds…
The mall. (Remember those?)
Back in my day we had an arcade with laser tag, a reasonable food court selection, and even a Ruby Tuesdays built into the mall itself.
Old Navy had somehow survived, and we needed school clothes.
After managing to drop $200 bucks at Old Navy (how in the world do you even accomplish that?)…
I thought it would be a great time to give my kid a tour of what the mall looks like now, so I could regale her of how awesome it used to be.
What I didn’t know is they recently closed off over 75% of the square footage. Couldn’t even go to the food court.
It’s a tale that’s playing out across modern suburbia – the shuttered homes of the 90s kids.
You had the Great Financial Crisis, then Amazon, then broad based ecommerce.
Which means if your mall wasn’t the cream of the crop, the math no longer made sense.
We’ve basically watched the slow death of shopping malls…
And for the past decade, it’s been easy to knock on malls, and the stores that look “Circuit City” dated.
That’s why all of the “mall rats” stocks have done terribly.
Just look at Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), which is…
Wait, it’s up on the year?
How much?
238%.
This “Dead Sector” Stock Is Seeing Signs of Life
Moral of the story: Don’t write off a sector when everyone else has, because there’s some diamonds that are currently forming under the pressure.
I’m doing some work on a former “mall rats” name that is starting to look like a solid value buy.
And it’s not because I’m the “expert” on retail stocks – but I do happen to know a few.
They’re the same folks who’ve tipped us off to open gains of 19%, 25%, 39%, and 53% this year alone…
