Always hate to see retail this weak. There are a lot of culprits. A weak national retail number. A terrible report from Best Buy (BBY). Weather that's just too warm to make for good selling.
But I continue to believe that we are having a strong holiday season. It's just that so much of it this these days is online. The numbers we are getting out of FedEx (FDX) and International Paper (IP) (containerboard to ship with) are so strong that I have to believe that we are now in a world where bricks and mortar just can't give you the upside of the old days.
That said, I absolutely believe that the market is wrong to sell off Deckers Outdoor (DECK), PVH (PVH), Nike (NKE), Ralph Lauren (RL) and VF Corp. (VFC), These are now all trading in unison, in part, I believe, because they all have European exposure, and once Texas Instruments (TXN) and DuPont (DD) called out Europe, everything that has European business is trading heavily.
There's a difference here, though. All of these companies have been very vocal that things have been real good of late. They haven't left you questioning how things are going. They've been bullish.
I recognize that what tends to happen is that these stocks go down for several days until they are oversold, and then they bounce. We are not oversold. But when it comes to the fundamentals, these all have good news swirling, and I don't think they should be getting hammered.
Too soon, but they've been a mighty good place to be, and I don't think that has changed in the last few days.