The great thing about investing is that if you do your homework, you can always find a way to profit in any market. Even when the stock market as a whole is doing poorly, there are always sectors and individual stocks that are doing well, if you are looking for a profitable trade.

Sometimes you have to buy gold or oil stocks, sometimes you have to buy an ETF that is short the DOW, S&P, Nasdaq, or some other index. But the point is there is always something going up.

With sincere apologies to the late, great singer and actress, Ethel Merman, let me just say, "There's no business like "shoe" business, there's no business I know..."

Today I want to be a "Goody Two Shoes", hopefully by writing a good article on two stocks within the shoe business!  The two stocks, both of which have been in the news a great deal this past week, are Crocs, Inc. (CROX) and Skechers USA, Inc. (SKX).

I promised my wonderful editor, Ben, two things about this week's article.  I would try to keep it shorter than some of my recent articles, and I would disguise the names of the guilty parties, so we won't have to pretend we don't speak English when the attorneys call. 

I have wanted to write about the subject of bad customer service for many months, but the obstacle is always the same.  Other than ranting on ad infinitum about a subject that everyone can agree is a problem, is there a way to make money from customer service, whether bad or good?

Readers might be surprised to know that in my younger days, I was a bit of a rebel.  Like many teens and 20 somethings, I thought I knew all the answers.  In my black and white mode of thought, the world was divided into good guys and bad guys.  For example, the corporate world seemed like one of the bad guys.  They were only interested in making huge profits, even if they had to pollute the world or commit mayhem in foreign countries to do so.  On the other hand, the good guys were the ones who wanted to save the planet, strive for world peace, and eat yogurt with granola.  If you could play a little guitar and sing like Dave Mason, that was good too.  Maybe I should have taken his advice:

"So let's leave it alone
Cause we can't see eye to eye
There aint no good guy
There aint no bad guy
There's only you and me and we just disagree"
-------Dave Mason, "We Just Disagree", 1977