By John F. Di Leo -
Should we be worried if the stock market doesn’t seem to be?
We get the oddest mixed signals from the economy sometimes, don’t we?
In recent months, we have learned of 95 Ruby Tuesday restaurants that will be shutting their doors… and that Macy’s will be closing a hundred department stores… and that 255 Hancock Fabric stores will be closing… and that Sports Authority will close virtually all 450 of its locations… the list goes on and on.
Every week, there’s another such announcement, and yet the Dow Jones Industrial Average keeps setting record highs. And so, some of us are perplexed.
They shouldn’t be perplexed. Too many of us have been raised to believe that the DJIA represents the economy – that if it’s up, things are good, and if it’s down, things are bad. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Such a generality is akin to judging American public health by how well orange juice is selling. Is orange juice an important ingredient in a healthy diet? It certainly can be… but it’s a mere fragment of one’s diet; you can still be fat or thin, healthy or sickly, regardless of what role orange juice plays in your daily food consumption. Your health is a very big picture issue, and orange juice is just a very small part of that picture.
Continue reading "Di Leo: Chain Closings and the Very Big Picture" »