Word on the Street

It was a tough weekend after the bloodbath in the stock market last week. Tech stocks were particularly crushed. There is a tremendous fear about recession, given the weak jobs report, increasing unemployment, slower projected growth for companies, minimal rises in median income, falling housing prices, increases in housing inventories, and the overall credit crisis.

It doesn't look good right now on a fundamental and technical basis. My hopes are that recession has already been priced into the market, as there have been grumblings about this for the past 6 months, and the S&P, for all of the bad news, has generally traded between the 1400 and 1530 range.

After feeling really down on Friday night and most of Saturday, I decided to do some "Word on the Street" type reporting. So I went to the Westchester Mall to get the pulse of the consumer.

It was about 5-6 PM when I was there. The mall was moderately active, but most consumers were not carrying very many shopping bags. Also, many of the stores were pretty empty. Here is the DKNY store:

Here is the cosmetics counter at Macy's:

Here is the Gap:

All pretty empty stores. We really must be going into a recession.


Well, before you pout, just look at these photos...


Inside Tiffany's:




That's not too bad of a crowd, especially for high priced items. I asked a saleswoman there about recent business. She says that while foot traffic has been down slightly this past holiday season, buying and spending has been up when compared to previous years. Their stock is near a 52-week low, so maybe an upside surprise is coming and this is a good buying opportunity.

However, the stock to BUY RIGHT NOW, after it's 10% pullback this past week (from an all-time high of $200 to Friday's closing price of $180), is APPLE!!! Look how busy this store was on Saturday! It was jam-packed. People can't get enough of Apple merchandise. Plus, in 10 days is "MacWorld", a conference put on by Steve Jobs. You know he will be announcing some very new gadgets that are in production. Buy it now and sleep well the rest of your life!!!