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Cramer on BloggingStocks: Costco warning kicks off the retail sale

Posted Jul 23rd 2008 8:30AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Industry, Wal-Mart (WMT), Market matters, Safeway Inc (SWY), Costco Wholesale (COST), Stocks to Buy, Cramer on BloggingStocks

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says these stocks will be killed today, and attentive investors can get them on the cheap.

Oh my, Costco (NASDAQ: COST) (Cramer's Take). I didn't expect that one. That's the best -- it's a shocker. I can't recall how many years it has been since I have seen the words "well below" and "Costco" together.

You can see how it happened: Costco held out. They didn't raise prices. Almost everyone else is raising prices and many are losing customers -- look at Safeway (NYSE: SWY) (Cramer's Take) or Supervalu (NYSE: SVU) (Cramer's Take). But two held out: Costco and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) (Cramer's Take).

When you lump in the ridiculous price hikes that Costco had to take in its gasoline business, you see that it simply wasn't making much money selling anything.

I am flummoxed by this. COST is a great volume buyer, and it has always, always figured out ways to make money. In many ways, this blowup is precisely timed. There's no one left to blow up but Wal-Mart, which by dint of its size can actually get the best deals from its suppliers -- better than everyone else, including Costco now.

Yesterday I wrote that you had to start looking at retail. It is just too hated.

I was a day premature.

Today is the day it will be too hated.

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RELATED LINKS:
Cramer: Retail Stocks Worth Revisiting
Four Intriguing Retail Plays
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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Wal-Mart.

Tags: cost, costco, featured, jim cramer, JimCramer, retail, safeway, supervalu, svu, swy, wal-mart, wmt

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