YEP! Looks like the section of the Times that I read over the weekend.
Question remains, the analysts not withstanding, is a (OK) $5.5 increase in the stock price over the next twelve months that great a use for your money? If all you invest in is retail stocks it certainly would be. If a conservative style is your inclination then it would be. But if you consider your self young and in need of a whole lot more cash than you have right now, and will have when you retire unless things really start to roll...well?
Now I suppose Cost could suprise the analyst, and it wouldn't suprise me if after I sold my shares if it did just that <g>. With all the new innovative things they are trying they may indeed increase earnings and quarter by quarter the stock will advance as it has between 97' and 98', which appears to be it's greatest percent gains since 95'.
I must have read it somewhere (my math teachers knows I could not have ever figured it out on my own) when I started this thread on the 16th of Jan 96' that cost would be growing at a projected rate of 11%. Well it's done better than that.
(laugh if you will but this simple illustration without the calculated percentages does the same thing for me)
95 to 96 = $3 actual increase
96 to 97 = $10
97 to 98 = $18
98 to 99 = $5 projected.
So, what's the deal? No one will ever accuse me of being or even pretending to be a financial wizard, but my eyes see something askew here. And far be it for me to stand in contradiction to the experts but... on what basis are they saying it's a strong buy? (other than quoted strong sales from Christmas)
Isn't it also possible that as the projected increase levels off and the company wades into uncharted waters, read new innovative markets that we could see (forbid the thought) a drop in earnings due to increased costs?
Even as I type this I know I am missing something. Perhaps the new markets they are creating have an insulator around them so as not to harm Cost's base market, or something to that effect.
Ah well, the Edgar Allen Poe of CostCo, ponders weak and weary through a maze of jargon dreary, wondering just what in the world to do.
Play it safe and hold?
Babbling on incessantly
Jim |
