Sears Holdings Short Interest Falls ($shld)

Your posts about SHLD continue to amaze me, as they lack any detail whatsoever to back up the majority of your claims about the company. Your admiration for Lampert is understandable as a value investor, but you are more than just a bit star eyed as far as SHLD goes… let’s be honest. The company has serious operational issues, and it’s management picture is a nightmare. I have never seen an executive team with this much turnover in my life, and let’s not even get into the inventory management… wow. Much of your thesis for owning the company is due to the fact that you *hope* Eddie has a plan, because to be honest all of your other postering has been dead wrong. The facts are the facts Todd and you need to face them. Eddie has bought back stock at prices that are 3x the current shares are fetching. In total he has spent 5 BILLION buying back stock… for a company who now has a market cap of… drumrull please… 5 BILLION!! How’s that for capital allocation genious? You must be down a cool 70% or so on your shares, so I won’t beat you up too bad… but sooner or later you will need to see what is right in front of your face. SHLD is an absolute mess of a company. It is poorly run from the top on down and has little chance in a world full of Target’s and Wal-mart’s. Eddie thought he could play retailer and getting better margins but he was wrong, and now that he has been so slow to monitize the assets that SHLD does have he has no choice but to hunker down and wait this storm out. The chances of SHLD going cash flow negative, especially KMART, in the coming months is incredibly high. Your wonder boy Eddie waited too long and, by his own admission, completely missed the current economic downturn. As a result SHLD is in the unenviable position of being a bad retailer the worst consumer credit crisis in history. Have fun with that one Todd….

By the way, can you even imagine SHLD without Eddie Lampert at the helm? My god… better hope he doesn’t plan on leaving his post anytime soon Todd! At least if he sticks around you can remain confident that you and Eddie will go down with the ship together!

Almost every company on Wall St. today has bought stock back at prices 3x or more than the current stock price. If you are measuring results over a short time horizon, then you could make the argument that Sears hasn’t been a great investment, though it’s held up just fine compared to other retailers. Over the long haul, I think Sears will turn out to be an excellent investment.

JT,

hard to tell why or when he sold in the quarter. his total $ is down so it may have been forced..

not giving up…it is hard to gleem anything from this quarters reports

Todd, Hard question to answer but do you have any theory why Lampert or a close money friend doesn’t swoop in buy a majority of the outstanding shares of SHLD.. Benefitting from both the long term upside (if he believes it) and the short squeeze that it would spark.

yeah that covers Eddie but it is a bit of a puzzle to me why some other large fund or top 100 billionaire doesn’t see it that way.. I get it they would be subordinate to Eddie but who cares if you could triple a $1 b investment..

true… keep up the good work you do a great job..