The early November period was rather sluggish but the good news is that the Thanksgiving weekend was superb and that really set the momentum for the holiday season.

I really want to hear him say how he's going to energize Sears. I want to hear what he's going to do differently. I want to hear him say how aggressively he's going to grow Great Indoors and how he's going to get women to come into the store.

I'm optimistic that there has been some uplift to business trends.

The consumer in America is just spending and they're spending with abandon. It's very hard to find a pocket . . . where the consumer is not spending.

The numbers that came out were surprisingly strong. You have to walk away impressed with what they've been able to do in a short amount of time.

It's going to shape up to be a real messy Christmas season. It's very hard to read. Some companies had a very strong Thanksgiving weekend, others weak.

It really is very weather-sensitive. You've got to psych the consumer into thinking the fall is coming. And the season is longer because kids wait to see what other kids are wearing.

They reported much better earnings than we suspected. It was all based on Fingerhut being better than plan. Department stores were actually below plan, so the quality of that (earnings) improvement reflects better delinquency rates than anticipated.

They must do something that's going to leverage traffic in the mall. They can't get totally away from fashion. They've got to come up with something else whether its making the jewelry area bigger or making the denim area bigger.

Alan is a proven winner in every business he's been involved in. He's turned around Sears credit, he's taken charge of their Internet business and given it life, and he's been able to reorganize their home-services business. Probably the best part about him is he's coming into his position as CEO and he understands how CEOs work, but he doesn't have the emotional bias. He can make a kind of fair assessment about what the customer likes and what he doesn't.