I haven't written a spread trade idea in some time, but thought now would be a good time, with the U.S. equity market experiencing a flat to lower price trend in July. Urban Outfitters (
A Fashion Statement: Long Urban Outfitters Vs. Short Nordstrom
Summary
- Urban Outfitters has been performing better in my computer momentum screens the last several months.
- Nordstrom holds too much debt/leverage, and its finances are ill-prepared for an unexpected Delta variant wave of virus spread, if such a reality slows mall traffic.
- Why not spread/pair trade the two against each other.
Nationally ranked stock picker for 30 years. Victory Formation and Bottom Fishing Club quant-sort pioneer.....Paul Franke is a private investor and speculator with 39 years of trading experience. Mr. Franke was Editor and Publisher of the Maverick Investor® newsletter during the 1990s, widely quoted by CNBC®, Barron’s®, the Washington Post® and Investor’s Business Daily®. Paul was consistently ranked among top investment advisors nationally for stock market and commodity macro views by Timer Digest® during the 1990s. Mr. Franke was ranked #1 in the Motley Fool® CAPS stock picking contest during parts of 2008 and 2009, out of 60,000+ portfolios. Mr. Franke was Director of Research at Quantemonics Investing® from 2010-13, running several model portfolios on the Covestor.com mirror platform (including the least volatile, lowest beta, fully-invested equity portfolio on the site). As of June 2025, he was ranked in the Top 4% of bloggers by TipRanks® for 12-month stock picking performance on suggestions made over the last decade.A contrarian stock selection style, along with daily algorithm analysis of fundamental and technical data have been developed into a system for finding stocks, named the “Victory Formation.” Supply/demand imbalances signaled by specific stock price and volume movements are a critical part of this formula for success. Mr. Franke suggests investors use 10% or 20% stop-loss levels on individual choices and a diversified approach of owning at least 50 well positioned favorites to achieve regular stock market outperformance. "Bottom Fishing Club" articles focus on deep value candidates or stocks experiencing a major reversal in technical momentum to the upside. "Volume Breakout Report" articles discuss positive trend changes backed by strong price and volume trading action.
Analyst’s Disclosure:I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, but may initiate a beneficial Long position through a purchase of the stock, or the purchase of call options or similar derivatives in URBN over the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
I may enter a short position in JWN over the next 72 hours.
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