Quote:
Originally Posted by GregWeld
I guess my point is this -- sometimes you don't just have to know WHEN TO BUY -- Sometimes you have to KNOW WHEN TO SELL... Knowing when to sell is far harder than buying. I've been thinking of selling McDonalds since my visit. It was just horrible food - which makes me avoid another visit.... and I wonder how many other people have had a similar experience. Spotting a trend is key to investing... and a trend isn't always UP... sometimes it's down.
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In the stock analyst community they call this doing a "channel check", and it's intended to serve the exact purpose you're describing. They can get a feeling for how foot traffic might be trending or whether the shelves are looking picked over or barely touched. They can see if the clearance racks make up 1/2 of the sales floor, or just one rack way in the back. They can also tell if the food quality is suffering or if people are going crazy for the new high-margin offerings.
(GW and others that may read analyst reports probably know all this, just throwing it out there for education purposes so that you know what it is when you run across it in an article)
I much prefer my own judgement over that of 28 year old stock analysts. Largely because I don't know their ability to see the business through the eyes of the average target consumer. As a result, I would prefer to do my own "Channel Checks" and derive my own conclusions, just like Greg is describing.