Below is my weekly video for members of Macke's Retail Roundup. 

Fear has entered the market.

Not panic just yet, but Wednesday afternoon in the Rose Garden, POTUS unleashed the Kraken on the market, the global economy, and just about any retailer selling clothing or making shoes.

We knew the tariffs were coming. We realized the cost of doing business was going up, and it was going to somehow be passed along to consumers. But until the President held up his Reciprocal Tariff tag board, it wasn’t clear just how much of a blood sport this was going to be.

I discussed the implications and reaction in this week's Retail Roundup Video.

Watch the video below.

Are we having fun yet?

No. No, we are not.

Stocks are getting hammered after President Trump's Reciprocal Tariffs were larger and broader than economists anticipated. Retailers and tech are leading the way lower early, which has been the case since this sell-off started to pick up steam in late January.

The immediate impact will hammer the margins of companies importing and/or manufacturing which, in the market consumer world is almost anything you can think of, to one degree or another. The declines in the pre-market tends to reflect worse-case back of the envelope calculations for how hard companies will be hit based on the announced tariffs which, it should be noted repeatedly, are "immediate", "permanent" and "open to negotiation". Three words not typically used to describe the same action, yet here we are.

Take Nike. Please. Nike produces 50% of its shoes in Vietnam, 18% in China and 27% in Indonesia. 

Going into the news conference Nike had probably been planning to shift some production around to whichever countries got the best terms. If so, this was a very bad moment in Beaverton:

Is it worth it for Nike to move...

I was busily preparing for the post-close rantings of a polarizing lunatic (by which I mean the RH earnings report and conference call) when it came across the wire that Amazon could be in the running to buy TikTok.

Amazon spiked on the news, as well it should have. As mentioned almost too often, Amazon is exceptional at deploying capital. Amazon convinced America to put what amounts to spyware-capable microphones in bad speakers, call it Alexa and sell about a billion of them. Amazon started selling Prime memberships in exchange for 2 day delivery on select items. Now Prime generates $50b in membership sales per year.

The company started as a bookstore. 

If Amazon buys TikTok and hotlinks weirdly specific targeted advertising to America's preferred hub for impulse shopping chains like Target might as well stop trying to build out online retail and focus on going viral. I'm only half kidding. 

Merging social media and retail seamlessly has been a dream since the first pop-up ad. In September of 2020 Walmart and Oracle announced a "Tentative" deal to...

If you're not scared of what's happening in your stock portfolio you probably aren't paying attention. 

The first quarter was the worst for US stocks since Q3 of 2022 and the first negative quarter of any sort since 2023. The damage didn't really spare anyone, but Consumer Discretionary was the hardest hit, falling over 11% for the period and bouncing off the over-hyped 20% decline required to qualify as an official "Bear Market".

It's time to revisit and expand upon our Bear Market Rules.

I've seen a bear market or two in the last 25 years. This is what they feel like. Relentless. Capricious. Mean. 

Need an example? How about the Worst Stock of the Quarter, the until recently widely beloved Deckers Outdoor:

DECK closed the quarter down 50% (nearly to the penny) from where it was trading before beating and raising last January 31st. And, as is generally the case with stocks, shares went down much faster than they went higher, falling 22% in one day and scarcely bouncing higher since.

Deckers was a wildly successful...

Below is my weekly video for members of Macke's Retail Roundup. 

It's another down week for consumer stocks. There was hope for a bounce earlier in the week, but now we're more or less back to where we ended last week. 

Call it a crisis of confidence. Several stocks on my watchlist have gotten crushed this week (one of which I love from the short side). Other than that, I'm laser-focused on the key buy levels for the rest of my favorite names.

I reviewed these levels in my weekly video for Macke's Retail Roundup members.

Watch the video below.

Lululemon is getting boot-stomped early Friday after the company.... wait for it... beat earnings estimates and guided lower than Wall Street's official estimate for the first quarter and all of 2025. 

There are a few reasons investors shouldn't have been shocked by LULU's soft guide. "Beat and Guide Lower" has been the theme of retail earnings for over a month, as featured in this article called "Beat and Guide Lower' is 2025's Hottest Trend". Lulu flagged weakness in North America a year ago, way before it was hip and the stock has been a murder-pit ever since. Which is also not a secret and something I discussed earlier this week.

Lulu is who we thought they were but that's not proving to be a good enough reason for buyers to step in as the stock probes the bottom of a multi-year range in between $300 and $400 (save for a few spikes):

A few thoughts:

LULU's Growth Problem Is Real

Since 2021 LULU has grown revenues at a CAGR of 19%, expanded margins 170bps and increased EPS from ~$4.50p/s to over $14p/s. In 10yrs Lulu grew its men's business from a...

As the first quarter slogs to a close with stocks down for the year and the outlook for the rest of the year "murky" at best ("horrifying") at worse it's time to start taking inventory, as they say in the retail industry. There are trades to be had but the real money is going to be made investing at a good price and letting the investment work. It's sort of a waste of time to call Generational Bottoms, there just enough of them. Consumer facing stocks have just been beaten senseless for 3 months; it's time to start looking for opportunities. 

Current Situation: The Pain is Real

I don't need to beat it to death again but the pain has been real. Despite decent trailing earnings there's been a lot of caution from the merchants, mostly based on the impact of uncertainty from tariffs and trade wars. We still don't have details on tariffs, and won't until next week if then, but we're already paying for it in sentiment. Consumer Confidence as measured by outlook for next 6 months just hit 12 year lows. Americans are mad and afraid; typically not times when we spend a lot of money.

Walmart kicked off earning's season by warning of a cautious...

Bottoming is best thought of as a process rather than a moment. The all look different but when you see a correction it usually hits these stages:

• A negative catalyst appears, usually when stocks are expensive. Expensive stocks get sold. Investors "rotate" with growing speed.
• The threat seems larger. Inevitable. The rush to the exit picks up pace in stocks. Everyone's running the same playbook and "sell" is the only defensible call as every group sells-off.
• The tide turns, slowly then all-at-once. The risk becomes quantifiable. Bad news becomes more company specific. Selling slowly dries up as (dirty truth of investing here): The Optimists Always Win.

That was the case to a much greater degree the greatest bottom in the history of consumer discretionary stocks in March of 2020. The group was down 35% in just over a month. Stores were shutting down day after day, leading to pretty much the entire economy being shutdown for the foreseeable future. 

It was a really hard time to start buying consumer discretionary stocks. Like a Trade...

Below is my weekly video for members of Macke's Retail Roundup. 

This week, I'm hunting for bottoms. There are 5 stocks that have my attention. I'm under no qualms about the fact that we could be in for more downside, but I'm officially in "tactical buy" mode. Any time you get a washout like we've gotten, you have to be willing to put money to work in strongly-held convictions. 

I've got a few on my list, and I discussed them in my weekly video.

Watch the video below.

Ending a correction is a process. Hoping for a capitulation Crash is natural but a bit of a sucker's game and sort of misses the point. Getting into a crash is the same process only bigger. It's like ranking tornados; some are big, some less so but the sequence is always the same.

An Unquantifiably large negative confluence of negative catalysts starts to form. Uncertainty is bad but most people buy the dip. But then the news gets worse. And relentless. The selling builds steam as consumers and businesses start missing/ guiding lower. Indices fall (>10% or it doesn't count) but the damage is way, way worse under the surface. There is no place to hide.

[Emotionally the short version is 1. "Buying the dip, thanks for the free money, Market". 2. "I'm still up huge and can ride this out" 3. "I should have taken some profits" 4. "It's that idiot's fault I'm losing money and I hate Bankers/ Traders / Shorts and this is all a scam" 5. "Capitalism has failed. I'm selling and living in an RV"]

Then we bottom.

We've checked a lot of the required boxes for a bottom to at least get started at this point. The market is still wobbly but the brutal, indiscriminate...

Busy morning of earnings with a little something for everyone as we try to figure out who, if anyone, is actually experiencing a recession as opposed to just talking about it all the time.

This morning saw a decent report from the dominant player in the dismal wedding-focused jewelry space in Signet, deep-discount treasure hunt chain Ollies and the magnificent Williams-Sonoma, stuck in the middle of a rare sell-off.

Let's grade them!

Report Card Rules:

All grades are subjective and relative to each company's reputation, messaging and likely appeal to Wall Street.

I don't much care about Q4. Does anything seem longer ago right now than last Christmas? Q1 reports in retail are all about setting expectations for the next year, establishing clear deliverables and highlighting any tailwinds or concerns.

TLDR: These stocks are all way off fairly recent highs. Anything better than whining about troubling economic headwinds and guiding to something hugely negative is a Beat at this point.

Let's start in the Mall!

Signet: B+

Signet slightly beat the guidance issued in January but missed the original Q4 guidance...

What if there isn't a recession? 

Retail sales came in soft for February, with some strength in staples. Discretionary was so/so which would have seemed bad two months ago but comes as a bit of a relief in light of the bloodletting we've seen in stocks levered to the consumer over the last month.

Shares of Walmart are down 17% in the month since the company took down guidance for the year based on Tariffs and the general ennui of consumers in the face of "economic uncertainty". Walmart wasn't a cheap stock at $105 but at $80 shares are pricing in a weak St Patrick's Day, a soft Easter and about a 70% chance of a lousy Christmas.

Being the low-price provider of discount grocery and household items isn't a bad thing in a weak economy. Walmart is the world's largest employer (except the Chinese Army). COVID and the resulting supply chain disasters made Walmart a much better operator. For Walmart to keep breaking lower from here it's going to take more than flexing and sentiment. It'll certainly take more than a .3% change in retail sales for February and some weak Consumer Sentiment surveys.

What happens if the sky doesn't fall? What if the...