If anyone remembers, CircuitCity fired all of its higher paid salespeople earlier this year (may have been this time last year), kept the lower paid, less experienced staff and allowed the laid off workers to reapply for their jobs at lower pay.

A bunch of us felt this was a very stupid move and I, personally, stopped buying from CircuitCity. The only thing I remember buying were a few flash drives for under $10 each (I think it was a price mistake).

I guess many other people swore off CircuitCity as well. They announced earnings the other day and they were BAD, real bad. The stock was down over 28% and hit an all time low of $4.75. The company said a sharp fall in sales of product warranties, services and other product add-ons contributed to a loss of $207.3 million, or $1.26 a share.

Hmmmmm, maybe, just maybe (now, this is a guess on my part) the fall in sales of product warranties, services and other product add-ons is due to a drop in actual product sales due to a lack of experienced sales staff....the same sales staff they laid off. What freakin' geniuses they have running the company. But oh, how the execs are getting big fat bonuses this year. The board is calling it retention awards and are intended "to ensure the stability of the company's leadership team by providing an incentive" for the officers to stay. Oh, OK, it all makes sense now. The leadership team has been doing such a great job at running the company that the Board needs to provide incentives for them to stay. Is this what's taught in business school? I must have been absent that day.

As much as I do not like CC, I like BB even less. We need CC to hang in there just to keep BB from dominating electronics sales. As much as everyone hates rebates, they do provide opportunities for good deals at times. And of course with CC around we still have decent PM chances as well.

But I think they're doomed, personally.

You know, if we could get enough bargain hunters to buy just one share each of CC stock, we could amass quite a voting block. We could have quite an impact on corporate decisions. Same for other large retailers. It would be awesome to initiate a consumer takeover.

Sorry but you cannot beat the Old Boy Network, they have things well under control

Not sure if this is old news since it occured 11/26. Check out customer tasered at Best Buy for allegedly using stolen credit card. Turns out the card was customers!

it seems like all the companies feather the nests of the execs. It REALLY pisses me off.
we haven't had a decent raise in years- yet are going broke paying more for health insurance, health care, property taxes, added sales taxes, just to name a few.

Almost 89% of the float is held by institutions.

Shares Outstanding: 168.56M
Float: 166.98M
% Held by Insiders: 0.18%
% Held by Institutions: 88.90%

They'll die off, and other stores will come in to take their place. It's just the cycle of things.

Anybody remember Sun Appliance?

But religious groups have purchased enough shares of Wal-Marts to get a slim opportunity to be heard at the annual shareholders meeting in Bentonville. Of course management wants the little guys to vote by proxy and the Board will do its best to denied those PIA folks from speaking, but the situation receives media attention. On the other hand, teachers retirement groups, especially CA, yield great social power due to their large capital to invest.

To further expand on Alan's figures. While the largest investor group is only 11%, the bigger ones seem to be private companies that really answer to whomever put the money up and often well paid management.