In January of this year, I wrote a post about Sears being confused as a retailer and that their prior earnings and SHLD stock price had actually reflected Eddie Lampert’s expertise as an investor / hedge fund manager.  You can read it by clicking here.   So I have no idea why people are surprised that their results sucked so bad today.  The stores weren’t doing well last year when earnings were coming from derivative transactions.  But investors didn’t care and the media loved to hype how wonderful things were going there and ahhhhhh! the love affair with a Sears buyback was just the topping on the cake.  If you read all the coverage today, you might see a brief mention of the “total return swap derivative” income that makes this year’s comps so difficult.  But for the most part, they are finally treating Sears as a retailer.  It would have been nice if they had bothered to do so when I wrote that post in January - the stock was at $172 that day, not $102 like today.  I hear you can get a great deal on derivatives at Sears and Kmart these days.