If Eddie Lampert is “the next Warren Buffett” then Sears Holdings (Ticker: SHLD) is his Berkshire Hathaway. And, by the looks of the stock chart, things haven’t been going Eddie’s way lately.
In fact, the stock is now trading below the level it traded at four years ago when Business Week first gave him the infamous moniker.
Clearly the press became infatuated with Eddie when things were going well. In addition to the Buffett analogy, Time magazine called him the “go-to money manager” in mid-2006; the Motley Fool called Sears Holdings the “Best Retail Stock for 2007”; and in mid-2007 TheStreet.com labeled Eddie a “super-investor” right as the stock peaked.
The shares are down roughly 60% since then and the press has done a complete one-eighty. The flip has been pretty astonishing. MarketWatch went so far as to call Lampert the “worst CEO of 2007.”
It seems to me that, just as the press became prematurely enamored of Eddie when Sears was doing well, they’ve gone too far in ridiculing him now that the stock has sold off.
If the stock rallies, Eddie may yet prove the current critics wrong and his earlier aficionados right. Either way, I’m sure it will continue to be an entertaining saga.
Sources:
The Next Warren Buffett?
Robert Berner with Susann Rutledge
BusinessWeek
November 22, 2004
Eddie Lampert
Daniel Kadlec
Time
April 30, 2006
The Best Retail Stock for 2007: Sears Holdings
Matt Koppenheffer
Motley Fool
January 17, 2007
What Super Investor Eddie Lampert Buys Now
James Altucher
TheStreet.com
June 4, 2007
Worst CEO award goes to Sears’ Lampert
Herb Greenberg
MarketWatch
December 6, 2007
Eddie Lampert’s Debacle at Sears
Barry Ritholtz
The Big Picture
January 15, 2008