A few years ago, we published a crude note on UK fashion retailer French Connection on this blog. It was intended (by me) as an internal analytical note, not something my mother might be able to read on the internet. But Steve had other plans in the name of a cheap Friday laugh.
Crude or otherwise, the post outlined why I wouldn’t touch the stock then trading at a price of £0.28. Over the following 13 months, here’s what the stockmarket thought about my bearishness:
A 200%+ return in a year! Serves me right for being all analytical about it – jerk. But successfully turning around a washed up fashion label is a job I wouldn’t even give to an enemy, and time ticks on mercilessly. Here’s a slightly longer term chart that runs through to today:
Ben Graham’s adage is as easy to forget as it is important to remember – ‘in the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine’.