chandising mix of clothes and specialty British foods - including Christmas crackers, jams and preserves - never worked well in North America (Le Riche 44). The most unusual part of this downswing of Marks & Spencer is that the company has added 50,000 new investors to its share register over the past year. Normally a company as crisis-torn as this one cannot attract such a voluminous new following of investors, and rarely can the new fan club have been so disappointed by what it found. The shares have been in more or less continual decline throughout this period. Many analysts are wondering why? (Anonymous 21). One explanation is that Marks & Spencer has appeared on numerous share tip lists as an obvious recovery stock. Many important newspapers included the company in its New Year share tips, and the brokers have been unrelenting in rating the stock a buy. But investors don't have to read the newspapers to think inthe same way as them. Marks & Spencer is still a very good brand which in the past has achieved outstanding retail success. The logic behind buying the shares, then, is the belief that they must at some time bounce back (Anonymous 21). This is a bad enough strategy to apply to stock market investment generally, but it is a particularly bad when applied to a specific stock such as in this case. The world is a fast changing place and just because a company was once at the top ofits competition doesn't mean it will ever be that way again. Marks & Spencer shares have repeatedly over the last year attempted to stage a recovery, supported presumably by those 50,000 newcomers, only to be bashed equally repeatedly by yet more bad news. The correct strategy with Marks & Spencer shares would have been to sell into the upswings, not the usual one of buying on the low margins (Anonymous 21). It is worth remembering that even at these depressed levels the shares command one of the best ratings in the retail sector, however. Thi...
