The news for US retailers is grim to say the least. But Justice Litle says investors can still make profits by shorting the most vulnerable firms in the industry. He picks three retail stocks that look overvalued in today’s climate.

This from Taipan Daily

At market extremes (where fortunes are most often won and lost), the wild outliers get closer to reality. Such is the case with the “mega-mall ghost town” scenario.

In the past two weeks, the financial press has been chock-a-block with headlines like “Commercial Property Loses Shelter” and “Struggling Retailers Press Struggling Landlords on Rent.”

“U.S. retailers are expected to begin a wave of post-holiday bankruptcy filings,” the Wall Street Journal writes, “altering the landscape at malls and on main streets across the country.”

One mall store manager – who requested his name not be mentioned – told the WSJ he expects more returns than sales on some days.

Despite having been burned by last week’s colossal head-fake, we were hoping to avoid re-adjusting our RTH double-calendar—but Friday’s drop of 2.7 times the ETF’s one-day standard deviation was not a good sign. On Monday RTH fell through its 50-day moving average and closed just pennies below it. After bouncing off the 200-day MA yesterday, RTH is down again this morning and trading below our theoretical break-even. We’re once again approaching our maximum loss, so we’re making the following adjustment:

-2 RTH July 100 call +2 RTH June 100 call for a net credit of $0.80;

+2 RTH July 95 put -2 RTH June 95 put for a net debit of $1.55.

Don’t forget that two contracts here represent all of our position (e.g., if we had 4 contracts at the 100 strike, we’d be rolling all 4 of them). Now we have a single calendar put spread at the 95 strike. Normally