Grocery (Short Mom & Pops; Long Dollar Stores & Judges)
This is a good example of what happens when a Walmart ($WMT) rolls into town, prices compresses like a boss, and puts local shops out of biz. People have to drive 40 minutes to go grocery shopping. That's bananas. Which explains Dollar General Corp's ($DG) strategy to, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "build thousands more stores, mostly in small communities that have otherwise shown few signs of the U.S. economic recovery."Which, in turn, illustrates, in part, the juxtaposition between what is happening in various communities across the country and the macro-economy generally. On one hand you have a record 86th straight month of nonfarm payroll expansion and unemployment at 4.1%. On the other hand, you have job and resource drain. Apropos, Todd Vasos, CEO of DG is quoted, "The economy is continuing to create more of our core customer." Speaking of jobs, we now have two precedents for judges ordering shuttered/shuttering retailers to, uh, not shutter. Last week we noted that Starbucks' ($SBUX) plan to shut Teavana locations down got blocked by a judge siding with Simon Property Group($SPG). Now Whole Foods has run into the same problem. Landlords 1, failed retail 0? Seriously...are there ANY winners, here, really?
