The Sizemore Investment Letter

Ah, to be back in South America.  Long-time Trading Deck readers might recall that I spend a fair bit of time in Peru (see “Going Long Two Beaten Down Euro Stocks”).  When you marry a Peruvian, you don’t really have a choice. Not that I’m complaining.  I can say in all seriousness that I’ve never [...]

Perhaps it is all the research I’ve been doing lately on investing in the art market, but I find myself enjoying the exploits of Neil Caffrey, the gentleman art thief, bond forger, and lead character of USA’s White Collar.  In the recent season finale, Mr. Caffrey was kind enough to return to its original owners [...]

At the end of  August I wrote about the diverging fortunes of the “Two Americas” and used the relative performance of high-end jeweler Tiffany & Co (NYSE: $TIF) and the Everyman’s store Wal-Mart (NYSE:$WMT). (See “Tiffany, Wal-Mart and the Two Americas”).  While Tiffany had been enjoying massive sales and profits gains—and this despite rising costs [...]

There is something about the words “Scotch whisky” and “Africa” that conjures the mental image of Sir Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. David Livingstone’s 1871 meeting in the wilds of Tanzania.  Stanley was a reporter who went to Africa in search of the missing missionary and who upon finding him greeted him with the now [...]

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: $TIF) made news on Friday when it announced sales growth of 30% in the second quarter and earnings growth of 58%. Adjusted for currency moves, same-store sales rose by 22%. But perhaps most impressively, the luxury jeweler managed to absorb enormous price hikes in its inputs—precious metals and diamonds—by raising its [...]

In the interconnected web of the global economy, the rise of China has been one of the biggest drivers of the decade-long bull market in energy and commodities. But China is also making its presence felt in other less obvious areas of the economy. Yes, it would appear that affluent Chinese are driving a global [...]

According to new research released by the International Monetary Fund, there is little difference in the two, at least from an investment standpoint. In their 2010 whitepaper, Serhan Cevik and Tahsin Saadi Sedik found that supply constraints have surprisingly little impact on the prices of commodities. The researchers found that macroeconomic factors are the main [...]

Luxury handbag maker Louis Vuitton surprised investors earlier this month. It appears that the venerable French brand is closing the doors of its flagship store on Paris‘s Champs-Elysées an hour early this fall. Is the high-end retail boutique another victim of a bad economy?  Not exactly. As it would turn out, demand has been so [...]

We appear to have a tale of two consumers. Consider these two headlines from the August 30 edition of the Financial Times: “Luxury goods enjoy boom as mass-market stores suffer.” “US consumers split into two camps” It may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but there is actually a mild boom underway in luxury goods. This is particularly [...]

As a follow-up to my prior post “For Opportunities in the Luxury Sector, Look East,” consider this short excerpt from the Financial Times special report “Wealth in the News“: China is on track to have a million millionaires, with a 6 per cent rise in the number of Chinese passing that threshold in the past [...]