Thanks for the info. We hear you. Good luck to you and hang in there. We all need to pull together at times like these.

Mitch

Look on the bright side. It is more disposable income to the consumer who is in large part now trying to reduce their debts. Then that “extra money” can be spent to effect us all. And they’ll be more willing to take on new debt. Unless of course they’re using it to continue a lifestyle they can’t afford because they can’t use their charge cards. Did we learn anything?

As for AAPL, if they warned tomorrow (unless it was *really* bad) that damn stock would probably go up, it is in world of its own.

What is rationale behind this? Do you expect warning between now and Friday?

As a retail guy (and one who speaks to other retail guys), I can tell you this is the most difficult retail envirnoment in years or decades. The PPI will go down over the next few months and there is and will be the threat of deflation. As a direct result of the cutting of our prices, we let two people go and now the ones left must work harder. This same story is being repeated over and over again – its just that it isn’t in the numbers yet.

@ constant: beer distributors? Food producers?
We call that the “McCain Plan”.

Borchers changes his call more often than Barry changes his shirts…
Maximum frustration out there…

I’m thinking, in a deflationary environment (which is, whether one believes we are there yet or not, clearly where we are heading before we make the big U-turn toward hyperinflation down the road a ways, when all that debt we are creating today needs to be washed away …) that one would like to invest in companies with little or no debt, that have high recurring raw material costs (that one would expect to see diminish as inflation persists), and a market that has at least some component of required-ness …

Maybe beer distributors? Food producers? Any other ideas?

“Among finished goods in October, prices for energy goods fell 12.8 percent compared
with a 2.9-percent decline a month earlier. The index for consumer foods edged down 0.2
percent following a 0.2-percent increase in the prior month. Prices for goods other than foods
and energy rose 0.4 percent for the second consecutive month.”

SO…

How long before the deterioration in prices for energy goods (12.8%) and consumer foods (0.2%) trickle into the “other than” category… timeframe wise…?

It would appear to me that the deterioration in energy should accelerate from here, as we havent even gotten into the huge drop as of the November data. Also, it appears that consumer food price deterioration seems to be lagging big time, as the food prices on grocery store shelves didnt start to reflect the past years price inflation until late this summer… when should it be reasonable to expect to see those deteriorating effects reflected at the grocery store?

We’ve seen the deterioration in energy prices trickle down to the pump rather quickly. How long until the consumer sees a similar effect at say, Kroger?

OT:

@Borchers… I smell capitulation in you today.

There’s no deflation, just people selling overpriced investments…