Best Buy…Not too Big, Not to Small – Just FAIL!

Posted by Howard
on February 7th, 2009

Let’s be clear, I am short Best Buy and I think we are in rally mode on the market. I hate Best Buy and always have. Go search past posts. I will be shorting more Monday and into any rally within reason.

I am staying with my long Amazon, short Best Buy, RTH, COF and soon more retailers as we rally. Amazon wins. They don’t have merchandising problems. They don’t have delivery scams. They don’t have service problems. They don’t have zit faced, lazy ass yutz’s running their stores (at least one’s I must look at).

I had a trip to Best Buy today with my classic pal Phil Pearlman that was off the chart funny. At least Phil, thought so :) . The line at the Apple store in SOHO to buy a computer was 15 plus minutes so we knew there would be no line at Best Buy and trotted over. There was no line. It still took 60 minutes to get the computer. Sheer chaos. The two people ahead of me were paying in cash (insane in and of itself) and there was no cash in the registers to make change – in the whole store. The systems are broken at Best Buy. Best of all is the Black Ti brochure you are handed for the Geek Squad after the hapless checkout and merchanding issues Best Buy faces.

How can Best Buy offer ‘The Geek Squad’ service to others when the ‘The Geek Squad’ that Best Buy paid $1 trillion for, has broken Best Buy. They might as well have a TARP lending department near the register.

It hurts to buy a computer and add to the sales of a stock you are short, but seeing that I was the only person in the store, what the hell. This company is a goner.

Net net, Best Buy has handed me my ass over my trading years and I should not be short the stock that I hate, even if it sucks the biggest balls in corporate America, but I am correct about it’s inevitable demise and am smarter at managing money.

This bear market will punish ALL the weak. America’s retail system is broke and none more broken than consumer electronics.

Best Buy is a delivery and financial fraud service wrapped in plastic and tubes of low margin crap. The institutions remaining that have propped this stock over the years will face the same dilemma that Fannie Mae, Capital One, Trump, Sirius Satellite Radio and Harley Davidson faced – the other stocks I have hated and eventually made money shorting (not Harley actually, I just missed it). Bad Margins, Broken Models, Bad Balance Sheets, Broke Consumer.

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