What happened to Home Depot's Stock in 1988?
It's got to be a bad chunk of data on Google.  Yahoo finance does not show that anomaly for 1988, nor does the chart from Home Depot's investor relations site: So a major problem with looking at historical stock data on these graphs is that they set the stock price based off of current market volumn. If I was to say look at Majesco Entertainment (COOL) in june of 2016. It would say that the stock as trading between $5-6. In reality it was between .50-$1.  But in august there was a 6:1 reverse split. So June's value based on todays current share count would be about $5-6 per one share. 1988 for home depot must have been a really bad year for them, and because of all the splits they've had over the years already screws that estimate of what one share is worth. There's a lot of variance in 1988, but you have to be looking at only 1988. 87 and 89 really screws the the chart's scale.
If your planning on shorting the stocks be careful, while the value of the retail sector may be declining there will be a lot of back and forth over the next ten years, and as REITs discounts to nav increases, there is huge opportunities for buyouts from developers who have other use ideas for the real estate. The real estate will always have value, even if it's not as a shopping center. Would you lend RadioShack money through the holidays? No, because the decline in revenue means there are no customers shopping in the stores and the cash flow will be insufficient to pay for the inventory. This is going to play out the same way it did for Linens 'n Things, Borders, and Circuit City. They haven't been doing very well for a while. Their stock was in a downward trend since October 2006. They had an upward trend since 1986, then in 2006 they transitioned to a downward slope. Their stock plummeted in 2008, then rebounded shortly after (due to the bailout?) to continue its downward trend. [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_48/b3910041_mz011.htm](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_48/b3910041_mz011.htm)  K-Mart and Sears merged under the direction of Eddie Lampert.  Supposedly it was partially a giant middle finger to the board of directors at Sears who had not allowed Eddie Lampert to make changes he wanted to make to Sears.  He used his investment firm's assets to buy up a sizable chunk of K-Mart while Chairman of Sears, then had K-Mart and Sears merge, giving him a more controlling stake of the corporation.  It seems he has not been able to deliver on the promise of revolutionizing the two stores to compete better in the modern economy though, as the two parts continue to struggle (as made obvious by these closures). I wonder if Home Depot price drops are just a product of capital outflows from retail ETFs, as investors leave the sector en masse. I think Home Depot is defensible against online intrusion, at least for now. If Home Depot is taking a price hit because investors are conflating it with other obvious retail losers (Barnes and Noble, Target, etc) this might actually be a good time to buy. (yes, this should probably be a comment, not an answer ... but it's a bit long). I don't know what the laws are specifically about this, but my grandfather used to be on the board of a company that he helped to found ... and back in the 1980s, there was a period when the stock price suddenly quadrupled One of the officers in the company, knowing that the stock was over-valued, sold around a third of his shares ... and he got investigated for insider trading.  I don't recall if he was ever charged with anything, but there were some false rumors spreading about the company at the time (one was that they had something that you could sprinkle on meat to reduce the cholesterol).  I don't know where the rumors came from, but I've always assumed it was some sort of pump-and-dump stock manipulation, as this was decades before they were on the S&P 500 small cap. After that, the company had a policy where officers had to announce they were selling stock, and that it wouldn't execute for some time (1? 2 weeks? something like that).  I don't know if that was the SEC's doing, or something that the company came up with on their own. "I used to be in research department for big financial data company.   Tell your son that there are three factors: Most people think that net sales vs. expectations is the only factor.  It might not even be the biggest.  It is simply how much money did company make.  Note that this is not how many units they sold.  For most companies they will have adjustable pricing and incentives in their sector.  For example let's talk about a new company selling Superman Kid's Bikes (with a cape the flips out when you hit a certain speed).  The company has it in Walmart at one price, Target at another, Toys R' Us even cheaper, Amazon (making more profit there), and other stores.  They are doing ""OK"" come Dec. 1 but holiday season being half way over they slash price from $100 to $80 because they have tons of inventory.  What are looking at her is how much money did they make.  Note that marketing, advertising, legal (setting up contracts) are a bit fixed. In my opinion consumer sentiment is the #1 thing for a company that sells a product.  Incredible consumer sentiment is like millions of dollars in free advertising.  So let's say Dec. 15th comes and the reviews on the Superman Bike are through the roof.  Every loves it, no major defects.  Company can't even supply the retailers now because after slashing the price it became a great buy.  A common investor might be pissed that some dummy at the company slashed the prices so they could have had a much better profit margin, but at the same time it wouldn't have led to an onslaught of sales and consumer sentiment. And the last area is product sell-off.  This doesn't apply to all product but most.  Some products will only have a technology shelf life, some will actually go bad or out of fashion, and even selling Superman bikes you want to get those to the store because the product is so big.  So ignoring making a profit can a company sell off inventory at or around cost.  If they can't, even if they made a profit, their risk factor goes up. So let's get back to Superman Bikes.  This is the only product company ABC has.  They had expected holiday sales at 100 million and profits at 40 million.  They ended up at 120 million and 44 million.   Let's say their stock was $20 before any information was gathered by the public (remember for most companies info is gathered daily now so this is rather simplistic).  So you might expect that the stock would rise to maybe $24 - to which if you were an investor is a great profit. However this company has a cult consumer following who are waiting for the Captain America Bike (shoots discs) and the Hulk Bike (turns green when you go fast).  Let's say consumer sentiment and projections base off that put next holiday sales at $250 million.  So maybe the company is worth $40 a share now.  But consumer sentiment is funny because not only does it effect future projections but it also effects perceived present value of company - which may have the stock trading at $60 a share (think earnings and companies like Google).  Having a company people feel proud owning or thinking is cool is also a indicator or share worth. I gave you a really good example of a very successful company selling Superman Bikes... There are just as many companies that have the opposite happening.  Imagine missing sales goals by a few million with bad consumer feedback and all of a sudden your company goes from $20 to $5 a share." I watched FRAN drop 50% when their CEO resigned a year or so ago. From 20 a share to 10. Took a year to fully recover and then slid to below 10. Of course they are getting slaughtered with the rest of retail. Ah - sadly I have no money. Mostly just curious after watching The Big Short last week haha.   I find that line of insight interesting though.  I've been seeing a lot of mall closures in Canada as anchor tenants like sears leave though. Kind of makes me wonder whether franchisees will start closing stores like footlocker and food court restaurants since they operate on such small margins, and the leases usually seem to be written around the presence of foot traffic generating anchor tenants. You have no clue what you are talking about!  It's all natural progress of Retail.   When Sears sent its first catalogs, it killed most rural stores.   When Mr. Goldman invented the shopping cart, and Supermarkets were possible, it killed most grocery stores.  When department stores started, they killed most specialty stores.  When Amazon started, and on-line shopping, it killed all book stores and many other stores.  When 3D printers get fast and more versatile, the made-to-order will kill Amazon.  Etc, etc, etc... You won't be, right after purchase Eddie Lampert asked himself nervously back in the day if he made a mistake buying Sears and he was right back then for the last time.  The merger with Kmart was like two sinking ships ramming each other to stay afloat longer, although I think Kmart was the bigger dud at the time.  All I think he's trying to keep it afloat anymore is so he doesn't flood the real estate side of the business with too much empty commercial real estate at once.  This is his only way to get back even just a fraction of his investment.  Sears took its last gasp the moment it sold Craftsman.  Now, they're just keeping the body warm and wheeling it around hoping no one will notice. "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/20/amazons-latest-assault-wipes-out-13-billion-off-home-depot-others.html) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; The early read from some analysts was that the selloff has created a buying opportunity for home improvement retailers, Home Depot and Lowe&amp;#039;s, which have proven themselves to be somewhat &amp;#039;Amazon-proof&amp;#039; and among the best performers in the sector.  &gt; Over the years, Home Depot and Lowe&amp;#039;s, which sell an array of building and home improvement products, have taken a great deal of share from Sears, and its Kenmore brands.  &gt; &amp;quot;Home Depot sells 50,000 products. There are likely products that sell online better than others. But Home Depot stores are known for great service. They have good in stock, they have powerful private brand label brands.""   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6oteug/amazon_partners_with_sears_the_beginning_of_the/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~172846 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **Home**^#1 **Depot**^#2 **appliance**^#3 **Amazon**^#4 **percent**^#5" I'd value your business at about $70k. $20k inventory, $50k in yearly sales.   You have a good margin, but your growth went from 300% in 2016 to almost flat this year. What happened? How are you using the $25k in profit? When I worked with Taubman, discussions were had that specified they had to sell, buy or do major renovation to some centers every year to satify shareholders. So it could have a lot do with that situation.   There will always be super high end malls in the richest areas. But if you see a Wallmart within 5 miles of your mall you can be sure your mall will close soon. Headwinds in an economic situation represent events or conditions e.g. a credit crisis, rising costs, natural disasters, etc, that slow down the growth of an economy. So headwinds are negative. Tailwinds are the opposite and help to increase growth of an economy.