wab said:
Is it time to buy LOW and HD yet? They both seem to be trading at a low P/E due to housing and consumer spending fears.
What do you think?
Hey, Wab, how are those MOVI shares doing?!
I agree that Lowes & Home Depot are trading at a discount. But I wouldn't buy either of them until we start reading about multi-year lows.
And on that subject, Microsoft isn't too far away from where it was eight years ago-- would you buy it today? What about Wal-Mart? Or would you claim that the markets have fundamentally changed their business models, leaving them too big & slow to adapt? Same concerns exist for Lowes & Home Depot, but we haven't seen the real pain start yet. Give it five or eight years.
Just like MOVI.
But I'll take another look at Home Depot when Nardelli goes down in flames.
_________________________________
Separate Home Depot question: Do the employees at your local Home Depot wear aprons or some means of identifying them as employees?
Three times over the last six months I've been accosted by total strangers while I've been browsing the Home Depot aisles. Two of them seemed like intrusive know-it-all handymen eager to brag about their knowledge (not that I'm personally familiar with that stereotype, of course) and I was pretty sure the third was flirting with me. Luckily (in my opinion) she was a woman but my spouse was not amused.
It turned out that all three were HD employees, but they weren't wearing aprons or even nametags. We're not talking about someone who was coming into the store for their shift and stopped to help, or someone chatting on their way home. These were people working their aisles but you couldn't tell them apart from the customers and of course you didn't know their names.
While I'm encouraged at the presence of HD employees actually working their aisles and even possessing some knowledge of their wares, I'd be a little concerned about being accosted by total strangers. Are these workers still trying to earn the coveted orange apron, or is HD too cheap to give their newbies a nametag?