After scaring people last week, the markets have surprised with a strong start to this week. A new record for the DOW today.
Microsoft was up 3.6%.
I was reading Canadian Tire’s annual report which arrived in the mail a few days ago. Management does seem very energetic and confident regarding growth. While there are never any guarantees, I feel good about my investment in Canadian Tire.
Meanwhile in the U.S. J.C. Penny has fired the CEO it hired about a year ago. The guy was a Prima Donna who changed absolutely everything at Penny’s and rolled out the changes without bothering to test them. He had apparently been responsible for Apple’s retail stores. What he did not realize was that Apple stores worked because they were selling a unique and hot product. It was not the stores that sold the products. It was the products at Apple that made the stores successful. And even to the extent that the Apple stores were in fact hip and very well designed, it was a mistake to think that similar concepts would appeal to J. C. Penny customers, who apparently were mostly an older crowd, or that hip young people were going to rush to a fuddy duddy old brand like J.C. Pennys. It is one thing to sell a hot proprietary product that you make yourself and quite another thing to try to make it selling the same stuff as numerous competitors. The simple fact that Penney’s went outside for a new CEO last year tells me they had no confidence in themselves at that time.