As we've been highlighting in our "New Highs of Note" column each Monday, America is finally getting back down to the "consuming business." Fast food, department store, shoe, and gadget stocks are soaring right now.
Leading the pack is Disney. Like the share price and profits of Home Depot, Disney is an excellent measure of how flush the American consumer is feeling. Disney owns television networks ESPN and ABC... a hugely successful movie business... amusement parks... and the merchandising rights to it all. This pile of assets is good for more than $30 billion in annual revenue.
It's also good for a remarkable recovery. As you can see from today's chart, Disney's share price has completely recovered to pre-credit-crisis highs in the mid $30s. Not many stocks can make this claim.
Considering this chart, we have to repeat our claim from a previous Home Depot column... Sure, you can be bearish on America all you want. The government's "handouts and bailouts" policy will end in a debacle. But it could take a long time for that debacle to happen. As long as stocks like Home Depot and Disney are soaring to new heights, the government-sponsored boom is still working.
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