Well, last night I was checking out some articles at Brandweek.com, and lo and behold, I came across this one discussing the holiday card. You know how Christmas Clubs work at banks, correct? Same principle applies here. In a simple nutshell, you get the plastic, you store funds on it, and then you can access those funds later on in the season to acquire presents. It's basically like a gift card that you use for budgeting purposes. Not only is Sears involved in this, but so is Kmart. And there's a promotion going on that's mentioned in the article where you can earn a nominal amount of bonus money on it. I don't know the details; I would suggest checking with Sears/Kmart for further information.

What would happen if a brilliant hedge fund manager took over a retailer and ran it with a rigid focus on financial metrics, putting aside all that soft stuff about branding and marketing?

Take a look at Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), and you have your answer. While macroeconomic trends haven't exactly been the company's friend, the stock has plunged from close to $200 per share in early 2007 to its current price of $66 per share. Just a few months ago it was trading in he mid-$20s.

JCPenney (NYSE: JCP), a mall retailer that competes with Macy's (NYSE: M), Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), and Kohl's (NYSE: KSS), reported Q2 earnings on Friday. How were they? They were exactly how you'd expect them to be in this environment: not so good.

Net income did beat expectations, though. According to Bloomberg, the company made 0 cents per share, but that was enough to win the analyst game since the call was for a loss of a penny per share. Total sales, however, decreased almost 8%, and same-store sales plunged well over 9%.

Facebook is making the biggest ad splash since Google, according to an article in the Financial Times.

More than four-fifths of the largest advertisers in the United States have turned to the social networking platform to promote their wares -- after several years of fearing these types of communities. The lure of Facebook must have been too much to resist, with 340 million monthly unique visitors. Now, it's not unusual to see the likes of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Nike (NYSE: NKE), and AT&T (NYSE: ATT) advertising in this world.

Sears Holdings Corporation's (NASDAQ: SHLD) storied and failed strategy in the last few years under the auspices of investor Eddie Lampert just keeps chugging along. Lampert thought he could turn Sears Holdings into an investment company that happened to have a retail operation attached. Didn't happen.

But, that does not mean Sears is giving up the ghost. The retailer everyone loves to dog as stodgy and out of touch is getting back into one business where it was decades ago: toys. That's right -- and just in time for the 2009 holiday season. Question: will anyone go out of their way to shop at Sears for toys? Is there a compelling reason with so many other quality choices?

Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), a retailer whose competitive colleagues include Target (NYSE: TGT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), wants to improve its brand equity and find a new path to growth. As such, it's willing to employ all kinds of initiatives, especially ones that will form a nice image with the consumer during this dreadful economic contraction.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Sears is trying out a program that offers protection against the risk of investing in an expensive appliance during a time when job security is not as secure as it used to be.

The program will run for a specified time period beginning next week, and the basic gist is this: buy an appliance priced $399 or higher on a Sears credit card and, and if you lose your job, Sears will credit one twelfth of the cost every month. Still no job after one year? Keep the appliance, your debt will be forgiven.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that short-sellers are having an impossible time locating shares of Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) to borrow. Chairman Eddie Lampert controls about half of the company's stock through his hedge fund, making the shares difficult to borrow. For investors who are able to locate the stock, borrowing costs are running somewhere between 30% and 40% per year.

Given the difficulty short sellers are having, it seems likely that shares of the company are trading at a higher price than they would were the stock more liquid.

On the other hand, 29% of the company's float is currently sold short at those steep interest rates, indicating that a big chunk of investors are incredibly confident that Sears shares have a lot farther to fall.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

As we undertake a hasty exit from the tumult of 2008 and plunge headlong into the mysteries of 2009, we might find it interesting to consider some business entities that could benefit from a little "freshening up." Four familiar names; Kmart, Playboy, Starbucks, and Wall Street, are each in need of a timely makeover, to varying degrees. But if you could chose just one of these big name operations to fix up for 2009, which one would it be, and how would you fix it?

First let's consider Kmart, the adopted son of Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD). What are the changes that Kmart might need to remain competitive going into 2009? Should the company try playing the boutique angle, which failed to work for Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT)? Should the company tighten up and consolidate, while pursuing a deeper product value play, or should it attempt to spread out its market coverage and work over its wholesale vendors, while engaging Wal-Mart in a game of cut-throat retail price points? If you were CEO of Kmart, what would you change?

Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD - option chain) shares have jumped higher today even after the company announced a Q3 loss that included slowing sales and falling margins. Earnings and revenues fell, but an extension of the company' s buyback plan is boosting the shares today, along with a positive outlook for the company's holiday layaway promotion. It might just be that investors expected even worse results from the beleaguered retailer. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on SHLD.

SHLD opened this morning at $33.98. So far today the stock has hit a low of $31.55 and a high of $38.47. As of 12:20, SHLD is trading at $36.67, up $4.83 (15.2%). The chart for SHLD looks bearish and S&P gives SHLD a negative 2 STARS (out of 5) sell ranking.

For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider a December bull-put credit spread below the $22.50 range.

We all know that this Christmas is going to be particularly tough on retailers. Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), as well as hipper competitors Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) and Gap (NYSE: GPS), will be fighting it out at the mall Mad-Max style the next several weeks.

It's not going to be pretty. With comps and cash flows on the line, these chains will be looking to extract as much discretionary money from consumer wallets as is heavenly possible. But there's a troubling sign with respect to a popular gift option this year.

Gift cards have been soaring in popularity over the years. Not only do they make great presents, but retailers love them because they represent a little insurance policy: if the Christmas quarter isn't as strong as a retailer would like, then redemption of gift cards will theoretically help the bottom line in the next quarter. The card purchases do not get recorded as a sale until they are redeemed. So it's like a squirrel putting food away for the long, cold winter.

Unfortunately, we have some bad news on this front: gift-card sales are expected to be down 6% this season. That's not what retail investors want to hear. It's just another reason for traders to short this sector.

According to the press release, net sales advanced a mere 1.7%. Worse, same-store sales dropped over 3%. That's the important figure to consider when talking about retail. Target did okay in terms of cash from operations, but that doesn't mean that things will be great going forward. Not at all. In fact, although management produced a gain in operational cash flow, all of it -- and more -- was taken up by capital expenditures. This issue of cash is actually the big angle of the story for me. Management states in the release that it has stopped share-buyback activity and that it intends to be conservative concerning capital spending. It literally mentioned that its business is not necessarily attractive to invest in at the moment.

If that's the case, should you buy the stock now? I'd say you better think long and hard before buying Target at its current price level. As I write this, the stock is down about 2.5%. It isn't at the 52-week low, but I don't see how it won't go back there, and beyond, before the year is out. Is Target most likely a good long-term play? I'd say the company is. But it's difficult to look at this report and say that now is the time to buy, even for long-term thinkers. Sales are down, the company's credit-card business isn't scoring any points, and the outlook is not favorable. I guess I'm in a bearish mood when it comes to the bullseye retailer...

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Do you like shopping at Target (NYSE: TGT)? Many people do. In fact, investors are hoping that so many people like buying things at the bullseye retailer that the company will beat earnings expectations for the third quarter. Target will be reporting on Monday, November 17. What should we expect?

Shareholders should expect a drop in the bottom line. Now, did we need a source to tell us this? Probably not. The consumer is starting to feel scared, there's no doubt about it. I'm sure everyone has anecdotal evidence concerning the fear that is out there. Consumers are afraid that the job cuts being reported in the papers will eventually reach their cubicle, so they're scaling back on spending. So, if Target merely meets the expectation for $0.49 per share next Monday, I'm sure many shareholders will breathe a sigh of relief, even though that will represent about a 12% drop in per-share profit.

I'm not so sure Target will beat, though. For one thing, Brent Archer recently reported on Target's lousy October sales data. They missed Wall Street's mark. Since Target beat the last two quarters; I figure we're due for a miss considering everything that's been going on. We shall see. I'll be interested to see how the margins are doing and what kind of position the company may be in going into Black Friday. And I'll be looking at the comps, of course.