Friday File: Another Shopping List Item, a Boring Buy, and some general updates
by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | September 18, 2015 7:56 pm
Weekly note for the Irregulars -- mostly about my personal portfolio this time, plus a new watchlist stock.
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Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2015/09/friday-file-another-shopping-list-item-a-boring-buy-and-some-general-updates/
Thanks Travis for sharing the performance of your portfolio over the last 10 years, I’m sure I’m not the only one was curious about that.
Re: Whole Foods, you make a great case but I wonder how much the surge towards online shopping will affect them in the near and long term. We order everything we possibly can including food online now, primarily through Amazon, and have noticed just over the past 6 to 8 months that neighbors are doing that to a far greater degree.
Could be an issue, but I’m not particularly worried about that — the trend isn’t moving that fast, at least to displace grocery stores, and any good online grocer needs a local grocery store, particularly for the fresh and in-store prepared food items that Whole Foods focuses on and, generally, earns its highest profits on.
That makes sense.
Travis, new irregular member here, was going to buy a little GRVFF in my Vanguard SEP brokerage acct. but there was a $50 fee to get in and another $50 to get out, so I said forget it.
I’ve tried 2 online grocery shopping attempts. I like the idea, but maybe at my age I don’t buy enough groceries?
One in Las Vegas with I believe Safeway. I figured out that I could buy groceries for my aging mother and have them delivered to her apartment for a lot less than anything else I could come up with. I lived several states away. It worked great for a year and then closed down.
The second was for myself with Amazon Fresh in Seattle. I noticed a dedicated Amazon truck come by the apartment building daily and deliver color coded boxes of everything imaginable. And it wasn’t just food, there were light bulbs and many of the other things that you might go to a supermarket for. I tried it and found it to be a fun service, but last spring that service kinda ended. Gone are the vans and in are the bicycle couriers. Somehow I haven’t found myself excited about it.
“Walk in with sideburns, ironic workboots and $200, walk out with three bags of groceries including artisanal whiskey, organic artichokes, Finnish yogurt, and two servings of sustainably harvested quinoa with stir-fried grass-fed beef in a teriyaki sauce made by rehabilitated Oxycontin addicts.” — LOL, really OL.
I don’t think WF has as much to worry about from online food sales as would Kroger or Safeway, for example, and that is because the in-store experience (ironically alluded to by Travis’s quote above) is so excellent. It has entertainment value. I went into one in Chicago recently, and the in-store bar was packed, with a kind of café-like atmosphere of people chatting, some studying, etc., and the drinks were decidedly cheaper than at a normal bar. Further, I think they have a loyalty among customers that mid-market stores would have great difficulty achieving, given their focus on not having a personality, but being similar to their peers.
A purely trend following analysis (if you can call a 10- second look at a chart and a few trend lines “analysis”) says you’re right, there will be a cheaper entry in the weeks ahead. I’ve uploaded my WFM chart to the link below, with some pretty simple trend regression channels going back about 10 years. WFM has an excellent trend profile, i.e., it moves up and down in extremely well defined trends and its current downtrend looks far from over. As a low grows nearer, that down channel will narrow, presenting a high probability buying opportunity upon a break out of the channel.
https://www.allantrends.com/category/public-archives/
Thanks Travis and Thanks Allan for the trend line graph. I am stil learning. I bought WF too high, but loved the store. Will try to watch and catch at a better price. Please keep us posted. Thanks!