“The question is whether the currently lower profitability patch is transient, mostly transient, or permanent. I am going for "mostly transient".”

Hope you are right! I own a bit as well, mainly DITM DG LEAPS from last Summer. Appreciate your updated thoughts!

Will you share any thoughts on FIVE? Tilson wrote about it recently. Their long-standing CEO left last month, lots of operational issues with too much >$5 and slower turning inventory, inflationary effects, weakening U.S. low-mid consumer, missing #s & lower guidance, downgrades & now paying four senior execs $1.5M each retention bonuses to stay on board. Yikes- ugly all around! But the occasional times we’ve been there with the kids, they seem pretty busy with a pretty good store location wrt traffic (although often around the holidays). Shrink, staff turnover & suboptimal wages, competitors- for sure, but hope these are fixable with proper senior mgt and policies. Stock is off nearly 70% it’s 52 week & back down to its 2020 share price dip, PE is now 13(was over 50), Mkt Cap now 3.8B. From Yahoo Finance news recently:

“Five Below Inc (NASDAQ:FIVE) has decreased its second-quarter EPS outlook to $0.53 to $0.56, from $0.57 to $0.69.

Gordon Haskett also downgraded the stock, saying in hindsight the company’s decision to start selling items priced above $5 was wrong.

Five Below Inc (NASDAQ:FIVE) has been seeing a decline in comparable sales. The company recently said sales for the 10 weeks ending July 13 rose 9.5% year over year. But this was mostly due to new store openings. Comparable sales in the period fell 5% year over year, while the company expects a further decline of 6% to 7% in comparable store sales for the second quarter. Five Below Inc (NASDAQ:FIVE) short-term expectations are bleak, to say the least. For the second quarter, the company expects sales between $820 million and $826 million, 8.4% higher than last year’s $759 million but below analysts’ expectations of $839.8 million. Earnings per share are projected at $0.53 to $0.56, down from $0.84 last year and missing analysts’ forecast of $0.65. Net income is expected to be $29.3 million to $30.9 million, short of the anticipated $35.9 million.“