Shares of Stockholm-based Hennes & Mauritz, better known as H&M, the world’s second largest clothing retailer after Inditex (owner of Zara), crashed 14.8% after reporting an unexpected drop in fiscal 4Q 2017 sales. Sales missed both consensus and company estimates with the resulting fall in H&M’s share price was the steepest intra-day decline since 11 September, 2011.
Source: FT.
Back in March, when we detailed the ongoing catastrophic deterioration in the US retail sector, manifesting itself in empty malls, mass store closures, soaring layoffs and growing bankruptcies - demonstrated most vividly by the overnight bankruptcy of Toys "R" Us, the second largest retail bankruptcy in US history after K-Mart - we said that "just like 10 years ago, when the "big short" was putting on the RMBX trade, and to a smaller extent, its cousin the CMBX, so now too some are starting to short CMBS through the CMBX, a CDS index which tracks the values of bonds backed
Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,
Here’s a comparison that is surely vertigo inducing.