Shopping for Retail Stocks

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- One of the fascinating areas of the market this year, to me anyway has been the retail space. It's been the tale of some of the older, once well-established brands struggling, while new players emerge in the publicly traded markets.

We've seen the once formidable Best Buy (BBY) struggling, and rumors persist that the company might be taken private. It has not been that long since it appeared as though the company had a solid position in the consumer electronics market with the demise of competitors such as Circuit City, CompUSA, and many smaller players throughout the years.

Meanwhile, RadioShack (RSH), which was founded in 1899, is in a steep decline, as a matter of fact the market is pricing this stock as though it's going under. Speculative as it is, I believe that this "cigar butt", which is a net/net (trading below net current asset value) may have a puff or two left in it. I did not become interested in this name until it became a net/net, but this one is not for the faint of heart, only those with iron stomachs need apply.

Putting speculative capital to work here -- which many believe to be insane -- is not a bet that there will be a huge turnaround in the name, but rather that the shares have been punished too severely. I covered the JC Penney (JCP) story earlier this week. That company has been around nearly as long as RadioShack.

Then there's a new breed of retailers, including Five Below (FIVE), which went public over the summer. This chain is a huge hit with the teen crowd, and if it had been around in my youth, would have consumed a portion of my newspaper route and lawn mowing earnings. Expectations are still very high for FIVE, though, and it's priced accordingly, at about 50 times 2014 consensus estimates. Too rich for my blood at this point (says the guy who bought RadioShack...)

Then there's the re-tread, Restoration Hardware (RH), which operates 73 specialty home furnishing stores, in the US and Canada, with a concentration in California (21 stores). The company was publicly traded before, beginning in 1998, prior to being taken private in 2008. I used to visit one of the New Jersey stores years ago, and it was the type of store that was fun and had some interesting merchandise. But I never purchased anything.

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