No Holiday Cheer for Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) as Online Retailers Steal the Joy

The highlight of the week before Christmas, from a stock market point of view, is always the third-quarter earnings report of electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY ). It's a tradition almost as old as St. Nick, and since the mid-2000s usually covered in just as much red. Back during the 1990s, BBY was the alpha dog of retail stocks. In a period of fantastic strength in tech stocks, BBY was every bit their equal, rising more than 1,000% from 1997 to 2000 by promoting the digital good life. Those were the days, huh? But as you could see in its report and guidance last Tuesday , the technology-driven big box retailer from Minneapolis is now just a shadow of its former self, disappointing again with a 5% decline in same-store sales and offering weak guidance. The saddest part was that the market didn't even care. Investors of other retailing stocks basically just averted their gaze.