Man commercial real estate (retail space) is even worse than I thought. eCommerce sales are exploding and taking over at a rate faster than thought.
The total retail numbers include sales of used cars, food, beverages, and clothing, items that are typically not bought online.
As for the rest, ie department stores, this is why they are getting killed. The percentage of their business, outside of clothing, is getting crushed.
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A friend of mine balked at investing in Bitcoin a few years ago. Instead, he wanted to talk about investing in an ailing department store chain whose valuation on the stock market was less than its book value...
Often, when a company is valued below book value, there are valid reasons for that. In this case, it is the fact that department stores all over the world are getting killed.
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This is why I say if you dont understand technology, you are really lost in the world. This is especially true for investing.
Your friend is a prime example. That is akin to investing in Blockbuster when streaming was taking off. Blockbuster thought the answer was Kiosks. Obviously it was not.
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This is absolutely true. In fact, almost every successful company started out as what we'd call a technology company today.
I tried suggesting him that he invest 1% of his net worth in BTC. BTC was worth maybe $5000 a piece back then. Obviously, he'd have 10x'd his money since then. Maybe more because from what I can tell, he knows something about trading.
My friend does understand technology but he's a "value investor" and a great admirer of Warren Buffett. He's loathe to invest in anything "speculative".
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I would say shopping malls that are below book value is highly speculative.
Well, we all have our paths to forge. If you keep at it and keep making more money, your friend will eventually take notice when your wealth exceeds his.
We are dealing with outsized returns that are combined with our effort. This is an amazing time to be involved with crypto.
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Definitely!
Yep.
Absolutely true.
This is why I cannot grasp why someone interested in blogging who is explained what Hive is would not want to follow a friend of theirs to Hive when that friend offers to hold their hand and support them.
People can be incredibly resistant to change. This is why I think it's a privilege to live in this day and age and have the type of mindset it takes to embrace new things.
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I worked at Sears a few years ago in receiving. Talk about luddites, I was the only one who knew anything about tech and delt with the ".com" orders coming in from the web.
I kept trying to tell them we needed to optimize for online orders to no avail. We had old-fashioned wireless G routers, so the product scanners wouldn't work in the far corners of the store.
Since we had a 5 minute guarantee (before giving out a $5 coupon to the customer) it was chaos trying to get those online and in-person orders on time.
You should have seen us running to the freight elevator (which was usually in use) then darting upstairs. Hunting for the product, only to end up in a WiFi dead zone. Then finding a live spot, scan it, then rush back to the dock and now have to find the customer and scan his receipt. All in 5 minutes.
It's no wonder they closed.
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Yeah that is a prime example of a company that was so out of date that when Amazon really started to make progress, they were one of the first one's hit.
When talking about value investing, in a comment below, Sears is one of those prime examples.
Value investing would have you buy:
Sears > Amazon
Nokia > Apple
Blockbuster > Netflix
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That's pretty horrible!
The $5 must have been the easiest $5 most of the customers have ever gotten!
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Yes the lockdowns have killed tourism. I doubt it will be fixed anytime soon because those politicians like to keep people afraid. At the same time, with so many businesses crushed we have less reason for people to shop around outside. For me, sometimes when I wanted to go somewhere I might stop by some places on the way (if I have time).
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The new normal is totally different from what we had before. This is only going to keep accelerating.
The politicians really pushed things into another level in terms of speed, without being aware of it. That means the technology push was kicked into overdrive. This probably bodes well overall but it is going to be very painful since most are unprepared.
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