Maven: Retail Realities

If there is a one minor drawback to being as intolerably pompous and smitten with myself as I am, it's that when there appears even a remote chance that I am wrong on an issue, readers pounce.

In all seriousness, I welcome the discourse -- all is fair is love and writing, as they say. And such open back-and-forth is the basis of a free and efficient market.

But I've been holding off addressing publicly what many of you have written me privately about: that my conviction about this past holiday shopping season appeared to have missed the mark.

As you know, I said two things -- both as the holiday season began and as it progressed. The first was that we were going to have a really solid -- though not unbelievably good -- holiday season. All the forces were aligned for such. As I summed up on Nov. 26:

"With gas prices down, the economy in a sweet spot of not-too-hot-not-too-slow growth and the stock market strong, we are going to have a good (but not spectacular, by any means) holiday season."

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