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Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

nytimes.com

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Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#241

Post by alx__ »

bearjaws wrote: post #31

This is a huge loss IMO, buying kitchen supplies and bedding on Amazon is complete shit. Target isn't much better due to lack of variety and types of bedding. I've bought the same bed sheets for 5+ years, a few months ago I bought new ones since some bleach got spilt on one set, it comes in and I could tell immediately the quality was far worse. One wash later, its ripping & fraying. Thankfully I could return them. S…

You're right on their cookware and bed sheets. But the rest of the store is basically Amazon trash in a retail store :(

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#242

Post by KoftaBob »

darkhelmet wrote: post #182
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #133

Anecdotally, the last time I went to Bed Bath and Beyond, it was an absolute ghost town. No one was there, the prices were absolutely garbage, and the inventory was no better than anything you'd find literally anywhere else. I looked around and thought to myself, "Wow, I bet their corporate rent costs a fortune to just be here, and they're probably burning cash hand over fist." I'm not surprised in the slightest. Con…

It's not just BBB. This description could apply to a good number of chain stores these days. There are exceptions but this seems to be an increasing trend. There are ghost town stores everywhere you look. If I make a trip to (for example) Target, it feels nothing like Target of 20 years ago. The chances are good that they don't have what I hoped to find there. I'm getting used to being regularly disappointed and am l…

>If I make a trip to (for example) Target, it feels nothing like Target of 20 years ago. The chances are good that they don't have what I hoped to find there.

What are some examples of products you've had this issue with at Target? This sounds like the exception rather than the rule based on the positive way most people talk about Target both around me and on social media.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#243

Post by elhudy »

bearjaws wrote: post #31

This is a huge loss IMO, buying kitchen supplies and bedding on Amazon is complete shit. Target isn't much better due to lack of variety and types of bedding. I've bought the same bed sheets for 5+ years, a few months ago I bought new ones since some bleach got spilt on one set, it comes in and I could tell immediately the quality was far worse. One wash later, its ripping & fraying. Thankfully I could return them. S…

If you want high quality home goods from amazon then you have to search for high quality materials: silk, linen, wool.

Same for knives: damascus steel, high carbon steel, etc.

If you just search for knives or sheets, or even cotton/bamboo sheets, the results are all a commoditized race to the bottom on price.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#244

Post by Arrath »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #194
bearjaws wrote: post #31

This is a huge loss IMO, buying kitchen supplies and bedding on Amazon is complete shit. Target isn't much better due to lack of variety and types of bedding. I've bought the same bed sheets for 5+ years, a few months ago I bought new ones since some bleach got spilt on one set, it comes in and I could tell immediately the quality was far worse. One wash later, its ripping & fraying. Thankfully I could return them. S…

If you want kitchen supplies, brick and mortar, and quality, Sur La Table and Williams Sonoma are both better then BB&B.

God help me if I ever took my GF to Sur La Table, I'd need a line of credit handy.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#245

Post by spokesbeing »

RC_ITR wrote: post #206
spokesbeing wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Qualified dividends" are taxed the same as capital gains. To be qualified mostly depends on a minimum holding time, 60 days for common stock. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_dividend

You pay tax on the cash now, you choose when to pay tax on the share price increase. Money has time value.

Of course but that's not what the parent comment is asking clarification on. Dividends are, generally, not taxed at income tax rate if you are buy and hold. They are taxed at CG rate.

A bigger downside of dividends is that you can't offset qualified dividends income with capital losses (except up to the $3000 annual limit). And compounding is different because you pay tax only at the end rather than every year. But those are different issues.

While I'm at there's the additional wrinkle that being able to actually get a significant LTCG rate difference by deferring the income really depends on structure of your future income and when in your lifetime you will sell.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#246

Post by sharkweek »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #118
neurobama wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole stock market in 2023 makes no sense to me, not just Bed Bath and Beyond. So many companies no longer pay dividends. So many classes of stock are now non-voting shares. Common stock shareholders usually get nothing if a company goes bankrupt and liquidates. So if I don't get dividends, can't vote, and am not entitled to a share of the company's assets, what is the actual value in owning stock? Do I just wait…

Everything has been fundamentally detached from reality, from stocks to housing. Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Companies can be unprofitable for literal decades but they’ll keep finding funding and buyers. Commercial properties can bleed tenant but the prices will only be up. In a world of shrinking growth , stalling productivity, and dying demographics, the market behaves lik…

I live in Seattle. There was a house on my street that had been torn down in maybe 2013-2014, that the owner of the lot sat on for a bit (it was one guy). He spent the next five-ish years slowly building a big, new house.

I’d laugh at how long it was taking him on a week-by-week basis while taking my dog on a walk. There it is, the house that will take almost half a decade to complete.

Well he finally does, and he sells the thing for close to two million dollars.

I then go look at comps during the same time period.

Because of his snail’s pace, he ended up probably making an additional 600-700k (or about 100k+ per year) because of how long it took him to build.

Jokes on me I guess!

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#247

Post by Clamchop »

rblatz wrote: post #92
nate wrote: post #63

I'm gonna miss it. I always thought it had an interesting Job to be Done when I observed my behavior with the store. We had one a few blocks from my home, and though I order from Amazon like I'm trying to win some kind of game, I'd go to BBB when I needed something that day and didn't want to spend any time on research. It was almost guaranteed that the thing I'd buy would just naturally be at the top of a review sit…

That's the role Costco has been filling for a lot of Americans recently. Most of the time you are going to find something at a decent price, that may not be best in class but at least it's going to be near the top of the price/utility curve.

I struggle with Costco's inconsistent assortment of products and poor online presence. I don't like going there to be crowded for two or three hours only to walk out with $300 in impulse purchases (I am weak, especially to food) but not what I came for.

And they're not good for all things. Their furniture might be reasonable quality but none of it belongs in my home, for example. Gigantic and dated-looking.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#248

Post by cycomanic »

FredPret wrote: post #213
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has been fundamentally detached from reality, from stocks to housing. Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Companies can be unprofitable for literal decades but they’ll keep finding funding and buyers. Commercial properties can bleed tenant but the prices will only be up. In a world of shrinking growth , stalling productivity, and dying demographics, the market behaves lik…

> don’t follow any rationality anymore Anymore? When have markets ever been rational? Markets only line up with reality over the long term. You can point to any instant, and even any decade in time, and point major inaccuracies in the public's collective financial thinking. > Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Do you have stats for how much of a problem this is? The problem seems t…

> > Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up.

> Do you have stats for how much of a problem this is? The problem seems to be vacancy rates that are too low, not too high.

No stats on my part, but I have some anecdotal evidence from Australia a couple of years ago. I definitely knew of several apartment complexes which were significantly empty, but advertised rents did not go down. The reasoning behind this was that banks used the previous rent for assessing value (which people used as capital for buying the next property). Because everyone essentially invested based on property price increases not rental income, it made more sense to leave the apartment empty and use the higher capital (based on a previous evaluation) to use for buying the next apartment, than to renting it out and not being able to buy the next property. L

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#249

Post by thfuran »

bumby wrote: post #211
kevinventullo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Housing prices in my small Midwest hometown have risen by something like 1%/yr on average for the last 30 years.

Just curious, what's the population growth been like? If it's been declining, why would we expect housing prices to go up at all?

If it used to be that two or three generations of a family lived in a house and now everyone wants their own, housing demand could increase while population drops. If marriage rates or number of children per household decrease, housing demand per capita probably increases.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#250

Post by BeFlatXIII »

humanlion87 wrote: post #8

I find the whole situation fascinating. Bed Bath continued to sell hundreds of millions of shares while they were preparing for bankruptcy and retail investors (or meme stock investors) continued to buy them. I assume Bed Bath did all the paperwork that is necessary (like calling out risks, that the raised capital will go to creditors first, etc) for such a stock sale. But it is clear they were doing it out of bad-fa…

That's why I call it the stock market casino. Don't invest what you can't afford to lose.
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