Abercrombie took the pipe, Foot Locker was predictably lousy. Where I'm looking now as we grind through Mall Store Earnings,

Some of the best trades I make are the ones I pass on entirely. So it was for $ANF which into earnings this morning already down 40% for the year and somehow managed to disappoint investors. The teen darling and recent 10-bagger reported numbers slightly ahead of expectations for Christmas but guided the current year well below expectations. 

Needless to say Wall Street focused on the negative, sending ANF shares all the way down to the low $80s or 50% below where they were trading as recently as January.

I love ANF. I shop there with my son, it's made me a lot of money and the aggressively suggestive catalogs from the '90s were an endless source of delight when I was a younger man. Here's a little secret: consumer stocks are where love goes to die. If you hold your winners forever you usually end up broke. Love the game, date the stocks. Long-term ANF investors should have known better.

Which doesn't mean you need to forget about the companies entirely. Quite the opposite. Shares of the Gap have been public...