It's one of those moments where we have to take a leap of faith and say that three of the best-run companies in the country experienced weakness in the end of June and the beginning of July, but many other companies experienced no such downturn.
Now Starbucks is international and Dunkin' is domestic. And DNKN's been a dog since it reported because of the insider overhand, which is now over. But there is no doubt that SBUX has hit a wall for now, and it will take a long time for it to restructure Europe and doing so in a miserable environment.
I didn't want to believe that Coach could execute as poorly as it did, but the jury is totally back on this one, and it did. Coach made a lot of mistakes in America.
Meanwhile, Kors made no mistakes at all and the market didn't care about Ralph Lauren's negativity about Europe. PVH and VF, on the other hand, didn't even have Europe to blame for anything. They had almost no weakness at all.Chipotle's tough. This one's the best, just the best, and whatever ailed it for four or five weeks is now settled or behind it and the stock is ready to roll, not unlike Panera, which never skipped a beat.
Sometimes you just have to accept the coincidence that three of the best management teams in the world missed the mark all at once. That's what I think has happened here.
Because so many others are doing so well that I just have to look through these three to reach the right conclusions about how strong things really are in retail land.
Disclosures: Cramer's charitable trust has no positions in the stocks mentioned.
