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J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

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Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#51

Post by MK999 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #34
mirimir wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolling, bro?

I was going for sarcasm. The slow steady death of Malls (the home of nearly all JC Penny stores) has been going on for over a decade now, and pretty much all of the articles I see about JC Penny's or Malls blame Amazon and people shopping from home for stuff. Given our current President's speech tonight and his preference for seeing things in an alternate light and his issues with estimating how full or how empty an…

For me, arriving at a giant parking lot takes all the fun out of shopping.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#52

Post by rednerrus »

A couple of years ago, JC Penney's was on to something. They were moving to stylish affordable clothing and it was starting to take with young people. Investors got nervous and wanted to move back to the inflate prices and have constant fake sales model. They are seriously wasting their real estate and potential.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#53

Post by losteverything »

I would be interested in the number of trailers unloading.

I wonder how much intelligence will be gleaned when and if automated semis make deliveries to retailers? At any given moment the quantity, weight, destination, etc can be real-time tracked with these self driving semis. Would be an interesting business. Especially if the truck could be tracked from manufacturer to store

If others could track automatic Amazon truck deliveries from their warehouses that would probably be desired.

I assume that once driverless vehicles are in the main then the trucks would have to broadcast and thus be able to be picked up by private listening sites.

Then some company will create a spoofing truck runs to give false intelligence.. and on and on...

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#54

Post by stouset »

gozur88 wrote: post #20
kazagistar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on average I think the goal of an index fund is to normalize results, so that you don't happen to be the guy who ends up significantly below average.

But that means you're not going to end up significantly above average either. Whether that makes sense really depends on your financial situation and tolerance for risk than any hard and fast rule.

The way that you manipulate this is by adjusting your risk profile. If you want potentially higher returns, you accept more risk. If you want predictability, you accept lower returns.

Self-selecting a bunch of stocks increases your risk profile compared to using an index fund of the whole stock market, but you incur significantly more trading costs as a result. If you want to increase your possible returns at greater risks, there are cheaper ways of doing it.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#55

Post by shostack »

sytelus wrote: post #48
shostack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The everyday man should not be investing in individual stocks like this. They should be parking their money in low cost indexes[1]. [1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/4049862-investment-advice-wa...

There have been lot of talks that index funds are not what they used to :). The reason stock goes high or low is because there is asymmetry in demand and supply. Previously, some people intelligently bought average stock noticing that average always go up high over long run. However, imagine a world where everyone is always buying average of all stocks. Now there is no longer asymmetry and no longer profits for peopl…

There will still be that asymmetry. My comment was specifically with regards to "the everyday man" who is not a savvy investor, does not have access to all the tools and data, etc. Wallstreet will keep doing its thing just fine even if more Mainstreet investors jump on indexes.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#56

Post by leblancfg »

averagewall wrote: post #50
leblancfg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course one of the axes has been scaled. We're interested in the proportionality between the two variables, to see how good their claim that cars parked is a good proxy measure for stock price. I see where "percent since arbitrary start time x" is a poor choice of units for cars, but since it's a linear transformation, you'd get the same picture (and conclusion) were you using "thousands of cars" instead.

I disagree that it shows proportionality. Since we don't know where the zero would be with "thousands of cars", it could be way off the bottom of the chart, which means car numbers are relatively constant, even as stock price falls to a few percent of it's starting value. The graph does show that both variables are decreasing, and that they both have a knee in the middle where the rate slows. But that's about all the…

Sorry, I still disagree with that comment. They're not comparing apples and oranges, here, they're saying "here's why we're using apples to approximate oranges". The graph is showing a close linear relationship between # of cars and stock price.

It's saying "There is some a and b such that:

    a * "number of cars" + b ~ "stock price"
You can have a gripe with that method, sure, but the graph is fine.
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