While it is debatable if spooky season is truly over or not—considering how many trees still have green leaves, it is hard to believe that today is Halloween—Halloween decoration has mostly run its course. So it should come as no surprise that home improvement giant Home Depot (HD) is clearing its shelves accordingly. This means you too can buy a giant skeleton for next year at a discount. Investors were reasonably pleased with this responsible approach to inventory management, and gave shares a fractional bump in Friday morning’s trading.
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The sale is almost shockingly expansive, and features such staples as Skelly, the giant skeleton, available at a massive discount. This assumes, of course, that any of them are actually left on sale. But if you can find one, you can get not only Skelly, but also the dog and the cat for 75% off. It does not stop there, either; the entire slate seems to be available at some level of discount.
The only problem here is the “if you can find one” part. It seems that the Home Depot slate of Halloween décor has already been rather picked over, and the massive discounts will be, almost, a non-event. Reports suggest that most of the Skelly line is out of the picture, and examinations of my own area Home Depot locations found just one available lawn decoration near me: a homicidal leprechaun that goes by the name “Cursed Clover.”
That’s When Things Got Weird
Meanwhile, the ongoing debate about immigration with Home Depot at its center took a baffling twist, as a man went to a Baltimore Home Depot armed with an Airsoft hand grenade. He apparently, allegedly, tossed the simulated explosive device into a group of day laborers who were outside the Home Depot, apparently hoping to run them off with the implied threat of death by explosion.
Now, the man in question—Brent Goetz—is now up on an explosive materials charge and an unregistered firearm charge in Baltimore district court. His defense attorney, meanwhile, refers to the incident as “…an ill-advised prank.” Indeed, his attorney pointed out “The Airsoft grenade didn’t hurt anybody, doesn’t hurt anybody and is a publicly-available toy for people to use.”
Is Home Depot a Good Long-Term Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on HD stock based on 19 Buys and six Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 3.32% loss in its share price over the past year, the average HD price target of $446.30 per share implies 17.35% upside potential.
