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The Death of Retail is the Birth of Retail...Part 2

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Howard Lindzon
May 15, 2017

It is easy to explain trends years after they seem obvious … the hard part is to ride them with your money before they are easy to explain!

Last May I blogged ‘The Death of Retail is the Birth of Retail‘.

It was good timing. If you followed my picks at the end of the post it was a hell of a good year.

Last week, I shared a chart that was already pretty viral plotting Amazon versus some retailers:

Sexy…but as my friend Jeff Macke pointed out tonight, not all retail is dead yet:

@ZakBurnsKIROFM @howardlindzon $ULTA $PLCE $LVMH $W and just for the heck of it $XPO pic.twitter.com/zfA3KW2P3F

— Jeff Macke (@JeffMacke) May 15, 2017

Take a look at Home Depot as well:

Ok…so Amazon is obvious and it’s been fun to ride this trend, but the death of retail is NOT obvious and there is a lot of money to be made off trends set in motion by Amazon.

You are not too late to make massive profits. Where to start?

I really liked this piece from 13D research called ‘Death of a Salesperson?’. Read all of it. This part was money:

As The Atlantic recently observed:

“Americans are shifting their spending away from materialism. . . Travel is booming. Hotel occupancy is booming. Domestic airlines have flown more passengers each year since 2010, and last year U.S. airlines set a record, with 823 million passengers. The rise of restaurants is even more dramatic. Since 2005, sales at “food services and drinking places” have grown twice as fast as all other retail spending. In 2016, for the first time ever, Americans spent more money in restaurants and bars than at grocery stores.

There is a social element to this, too. Many young people are driven by the experiences that will make the best social media content—whether it’s a conventional beach pic or a well-lit plate of glistening avocado toast. Laugh if you want, but these sorts of questions—“what experience will reliably deliver the most popular Instagram post?”—really drive the behavior of people ages 13 and up.”

It helps explain why internet travel leaders have seen their stock prices boom (I have blogged about my long positions in $CTRP and $MMYT). It also explains why Warren Buffett has been buying the skies.

Massive waves are in motion. Try to read beyond the headlines.

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