At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street
analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and
"initiating coverage at neutral." So you might think we'd be
the last people to give virtual ink to such "news." And we
would be -- if that were all we were doing.
But in "This Just In," we don't simply tell you what the
analysts said. We'll also show you whether they know what
they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted
Motley Fool CAPS, our tool for rating stocks and analysts
alike. With CAPS, we track the long-term performance of Wall
Street's best and brightest -- and its worst and sorriest,
too.
And speaking of the best ...
By all accounts, this is shaping up to be a horrible
year for clothing retailers. Yet Warren
Buffett just upped his stakein
Walmart Stores (NYSE: WMT), and on Tuesday,
Standpoint Researchinitiated coverage on
Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO) with a "buy" rating
– saying "The market has over-reacted to
bad news."
It gets a Fool to wondering, might there be value in
retail after all?
Let's go to the tape
At first glance, Standpoint's record might lead you to
doubt it. Although ranked in the top 5% of investors we track
on CAPS, Standpoint has relied heavily on the
mining sectorto power its outperformance
– going three-for-three on its
recommendations of
RTI International ,
Century Aluminum (Nasdaq: CENX), and
Alcoa (NYSE: AA). Meanwhile in retail,
Standpoint resembles the slow kid who somehow managed to
reach the front row outside a Black Friday sale
– soon as the doors opened,
Standpoint got trampled:
 Stock
Standpoint Says:
CAPS says:
Standpoint's Picks Beating
(Lagging) S&P By:
Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN)
Outperform
**
(41 points)
CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS)
Outperform
****
(14 points)
Crocs
Outperform
*
(11 points)
Deckers (Nasdaq: DECK) Continued... |