Ed Lampert fund sinks 27%

Sears is toast. In a down economy, the good retailers pick up market share and the poor ones lose. Guess which category Sears fall in? Further, the demand for retail real estate is close to zero now, so the Sears real estate play is off the table. In a year the current stocck price will seem like a dream. This stock has a long way to fall.

Eddie is a man about the money. The downfall thus far is his lack of knowledge in the retail environment. The leadership within Sears lacks the same. The first rule of management would have been surrounding oneself with people to compliment the areas were you lack knowledge. The senior leadership comes from very diverse background, non of which is retail. Eddie is running Sears for the equity and not the growth potential of a retail entity. To steal a comment from a previous article…. All Eddie is doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. He has not left his footprint of positive change within this business. It all comes back to the lack of leadership and vision.

I’m not sure I understand your comment. However, I agree with you Wall St. is short sighted. Guys who’ve been making money hand over fist for decades are currently long Sears for good reason. It’s dramatically undervalued on almost any basis except for a 12month one, which is a crap shoot at best. Who is long Sears: Lampert, Ackman, Pabrai, Berkowitz, Bill Miller, Whitney Tilson, Michael Price, and the list goes on. Not bad company to be keeping for common shareholders. Sears is probably a $400/share stock within 5 years.

In bull markets everyone is the “next Warren Buffett.” Only when the stuff hits the fan do we realize who the great investors are. A young Buffett would never have invested in Citi before the mortgage meltdown. Comparing SHLD to BRK was an absolutely absurd observation made by more than one business personality. The two core businesses are inherently different; and we have learned that SHLD requires much more capital than Lampert and company projected. Lampert supporters, namely Jim Cramer, have put Eddie and SHLD atop a pedestal. SHLD’s stock price has fallen back to earth with Lampert soon to follow.

I will never get over the short-sightedness of Wall Street. One year ago it was not financially reasonable for Sears to have been over $120 per share. Except, that Wall Street expected out of Lampert great retail expertise, which displayed up to that time. It didn’t hurt either that Lampert was out burning cash as he bought up over-priced shares of Sears. All that having been said, Sears did not really fall from its public high point, but from an actual value point much lower than Wall Street saw, say $120. Thus, the percentage decline for Sears over the past year is overstated in terms of significance.