This Frustrating New Market

If you want to know why it is so frustrating to be buying stocks up here think no further than the Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Trade Now) push into the high-end retail stocks, a push that, even as flexible and chameleon-like that I am, I find flabbergasting.

All year the trade has been to be buying the recovery stocks, the companies that sell the most expensive goods, and abandon the dollar stocks which peaked last year in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s. It was plain as day.

But Goldman never gave you that call. Nope. Not one bit. Until now. In the last two weeks we have seen Ralph Lauren (RL - commentary - Trade Now)go on the conviction buy list after a 75% climb, and now Nordstrom (JWN - commentary - Trade Now) and Coach (COH - commentary - Trade Now) go on the buy list after about 160% and 70% appreciation, respectively.

In the old days, anyone at a research-oriented bank would hesitate to go to the investment committee to recommend stocks that have risen that much. I think they would have been reamed, just taken apart. I think it would have been brutal.

Sometimes never is better than late.

Then, to add insult to the process, the firm is telling you to sell the dollar-store stuff and downgrades Dollar Tree (DLTR - commentary - Trade Now) because the fundamentals are peaking. Well, thanks so much, Goldman. I just bought Dollar General from you and if Dollar Tree is peaking I can't stay in the same cohort even if Dollar General has faster growth.

I think it is decisions like these made at Goldman -- and I don't really mean to pick on Goldman as just the other day Morgan Stanley (MS - commentary - Trade Now) started pushing the diversified industrials long after they bottomed and took off -- that make so many veterans angry at the market.

Just when Nordstrom has truly gotten expensive, just when this low double-digit grower is trading at more than 20 times earnings, that's when Goldman goes positive?

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