When Sears Holdings (SHLD) announced its restructuring of operations, the most discussed point was if this was the beginning of Lampert's own "Berkshire Hathaway". Rarely discussed is the fact that Sears has much more going for it compared to a dying/failing manufacturer of commodity textiles . The ignorant and impatient regularly call for a fire sale of assets as if they have no on-going value. This couldn't be further from the truth. In the most recent Annual Letter, Mr. Lampert discusses the unseen value held by Sears brands alone.

One of our most important resources is the great brands we own, in particular DieHard, Craftsman, Kenmore, and Lands’ End. All four of these brands have significant equity with customers and provide tremendous opportunity for value creation. To illustrate, let me discuss one of them, DieHard, in more detail. Based on brand recognition studies, DieHard leads in customer recognition among car battery brands by a wide margin, but it lags dramatically in market share. Why? We believe it is due to fewer points of distribution. As a proprietary brand, DieHard is only available in 900 Sears Auto Centers and 1,400 Kmart stores. Yet it is competing with other batteries that are available in thousands of locations across the country. Further, a car battery purchase is a duress purchase event, in which the customer is looking for the nearest, most convenient solution. Unfortunately, it is not always us, but there is an opportunity for us to rethink our brand distribution strategy to create value.

Haynes International (HAYN) develops, markets, and manufactures specialty alloys for aerospace, chemical processing, gas turbines, power generation, incineration, industrial heating, hazardous waste, etc. These alloys are manufactured in several forms: sheet, coil, plate, forgings, fasteners, bar, wire, billet, tube, as well as value-added custom cuts and forms.

SuperValu (SVU), a grocer, pharmacy, and grocer logistics company with 2,478 stores announces a 25% increase in year over year earnings. What happens?

The stock drops almost 20% in two days. Why? The CEO did something really stupid and short-sighted: He was honest about the state of inflation, food prices, and the U.S. consumer.

In an effort to become a better stock picker, it helps to understand the thinking and reasoning of the best. Leucadia National (LUK) has an excellent reputation for finding companies, both public and private, in distressed sectors, locations, or business situations, and having the patience to see past the current troubles.

In that vein, I enjoy looking at its recent equity purchases and trying to figure out what is so appealing about each company. The most recent purchases for LUK include: Capital Southwest (CSWC), General Industries (GEIO), and United Western Bancorp (UWBK). These companies were purchased between August and November of 2007. GEIO went through a merger during that period, making it difficult to know when LUK got involved. UWBK is a bank and I find it difficult to understand and value a blind pool of assets and its management. This leaves us with CSWC, one of Forbes’ “100 Most Trustworthy Companies”.

Leucadia National (LUK) is a very interesting company based out of Utah. This company's diversified operations include manufacturing, real estate development activities, medical product development, health care, winery operations, residual banking and lending activities, oil and gas contract drilling, gaming entertainment, copper mining in Spain, Australian iron mining, timber/lumber, and communication.

An easy way to determine the future of a company is to listen to the chairman, CEO and largest investor. So why is Sears (SHLD) surrounded with speculation of liquidations, real estate sales, brand sales or laundry lists of public takeover candidates?