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Picking Winners in Retail Is a Loser's Game

By Jim Cramer

 About this article:
 Retail stock investing, after the big run in the stocks -- up 17% for the year -- remains totally treacherous; yesterday's move of Gap to "conviction buy" status at Goldman is part of the difficulties I have making sense of the group. The Gap selection, which you can now move into if you want at a cheap price because of yesterday's selloff, is in part because its stock is down 2% vs. the others. It's also in part because of the possibility of a turn at key division Old Navy. But in the end, I regard this conviction selection based on the notion of easy compares. Put simply, Gap did poorly last year, so the modest improvement in business will make things look terrific this year. I want to contrast this with one of my favorite retailers, Urban Outfitters , the parent of Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and FreePeople....

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