Sunday, May 19, 2013

Star Trek Investing - Avoiding the Red Shirts of Doom

One of the great things about writing for The Motley Fool -- and there are plenty of great things -- is that you are encouraged to frame content in a timely manner.

Let's take this weekend's debut of Star Trek Into Darkness. From an investment perspective, naturally one can approach it from the studio and merchandising angles. However, I chose to take a popular nugget and turn it into an investment article.

One common observation is that folks donning the red shirts when they get beamed down along with Kirk and other crew members are easy targets. They die. How could I turn that into an investing article? Well, how about retailers that are destined to die. These are the retailers wearing the red shirts. It was a fun article to write. They all are.

I'm sure I'll get some heat from shareholders of the four retailers that I did single out, but you can't always live long and prosper.