The Random Walk Promotional ensemble helps detect inflection such as the ones recently seen in $LULU $RH, $CAVA $CBRL $WING $AEO when brands start spamming their customers and leads with emails.

$VSXY Our promotional ensemble detected the inflection in Victoria's Secret from dramatically reduced email campaigns and discounts. Both VS and Pink reduced steep discounts. When organic demand explodes brands do not need to push promotions to the inbox!

$WING US consumers are getting squeezed. Wingstop comps sink 9%. The fast casual restaurants have been firing off discounts at an unprecedented rate. Wingstop resorted to new discount campaigns our system captured.

$CMG Has its new marketing strategy driven engagement? Our new campaign search feature allows direct investigation, we paired this with Claude to assess the impact of recent marketing. ranwalk.com/has-chipotles-sp…

$LULU Shares making 6 year lows, we uploaded the Random Walk indices to Claude here's what it said: "The promotional volume (especially desperation) prefectly coincided with comps and shares turning negative, its a textbook case of the market catching up to what the promotional volume showed"

$ASO earnings call narrative typically is unhelpful for investors and disconnected from reality. After comps and traffic flipped negative management sent 90% off email campaigns. What do they call these on the call? "promotional optimization"

$TPR Incredible turnaround for Coach continues. The Random Walk promotional ensemble has tracked this now 25% growth. From having to constantly blast out significant and steep discount in prior years to having now nearly eliminated email discounts campaigns!

$AEO Promotional ensemble. Inflection in Aerie , with negative comps just a few Qs ago to 20% . When organic demand turns on- email discounts turn off!

$NKE fun to look back beyond the Street's obsession with predicting the recent past into a better signal for slumping demand! #justdoit .

For $RH tonight, this chart has many implications: 1) no they are not running out of cash or have "liquidity" issues or wouldn't cut back promo. 2) GM likely to beat. We did channel check Newport Beach on Sunday. Only ~20% store red tagged vs. ~90% on August trip. Physical channel check backs the email promo chart - thats encouraging for bulls. Traffic solid. More people in Waterworks than ever seen (strange). Several "RH Trade" were working in office. Several design consultants actively in discussions with customers outside. Street has expenses coming down a ton in 4Q25 but clearly Gary seems to be incentivized to have these people working. Easy to get restaurant resy day of - much harder to get one at the local Houstons. Still the restaurant was packed. This time last year you couldn't get one for 2-3 months. Think it might be because they opened up all the tables - used to see what looked like tables intentionally kept empty to drive hype. Everyone knows I am a huge RH skeptic but really don't know what to play for on the downside at this point. Own some OTM calls - vol is really cheap for rest of year after this week. Small size as always - remember $RH is only for fun people. It really shouldn't be a public company but great for me since I get to write about it. You can find all of our longer-term thought pieces on $RH as well as an institutional quality financial model for free at the M Squared Capital website. Link is in my profile as well as the next post. We will always keep Restoration Hardware and $NKE free but subscribers get full access to all 14 companies that we currently cover (15th coming soon!). Thank you Random Walk for the chart. Very cool dataset.

The holidays are a confusing time for investors. Endless deals and discounts and promotions. Are sale organic and sustainable or just buying the #. Dont guess. Our soon to be released AI driven interface allows instant access to our best in class data repository tracking promotions 7 years. #promotions $LULU

$ANF not all doom and gloom in retail. The reduction in discount campaigns from Abercrombie helped tip off the inflection. Denim still strong $GAP $AEO $LEVI

$WMT Not everyone is smashing their customers inboxes with endless discount campaigns.

$BBWI vs $WMT Our promotional ensemble reveals rapidly shifting preferences. With explosive inflation limiting demand for discretionary bubbles and towards food and clothing. As Bed Bath customers waiting for steeper discounts, management ramped up email promotions.

$MODG Nice 50% loss for Callaway With spiraling inflation consumer preferences are quickly shifting away from these type of expensive 'experiences'. We've seen this in the past where discounts are pumped up to try and hit a revenue # in order to put lip stick on it.... morningstar.com/news/marketw…

(2/2) $VFC: Timberland DTC - Luv 2 Luv Ya During the earnings call a few weeks ago we noticed a tone change towards VF Corp’s discussion of the Timberland business that probably should have noticed the quarter before, although it was less obvious. Bracken Darrell, President and CEO specifically used the Timberland brand as an example of “what they see coming”. The last time this company had an investor day focused almost entirely on Timberland was over a decade ago in 2014 (we attended that event) and not only do we compare/contrast the state of the business today versus back then, but also the overall narrative that seems to be developing. There are meaningful advantages to the DTC business model for powerful brands, but the question remains does Timberland fall within that category anymore… We also investigated management’s commentary towards recent product at both Timberland and Vans. Not surprising there is a bit of discrepancy here but funny to discover that even the shoes Bracken himself showed he was wearing on the conference call are potentially not as popular as implied. We also looked into email activity from the company and noticed two opposing themes from the data: 1) Timberland might be getting worse, 2) Vans seems to be getting healthier. Lastly as always, we look into consensus estimates which in this case are an absolute mess… The company has been pushing the thesis of a Timberland apparel business for approximately 15 years now. They talked extensively about this back in the 2014 investor day… Coincidentally Timberland has also been pushing the idea that it can become a year-round lifestyle brand for over a decade to no avail… The solution to this problem seems to be a physical store buildout of the DTC channel and while we are encouraged by management’s optimism, this is the same exact approach implemented over a decade ago to less than optimal results… We find it interesting that the company is getting incrementally excited about DTC expansion for Timberland at the same moment promotional activity for the brand is accelerating. For example, the company is running a “Vault is open 60% off” campaign that we didn’t see last year. We searched the Random Walk email database for the word “extra” amongst all Timberland communication for the past two years and discovered an uptick in June that has persisted until today… This is a highly abridged version of this 9 page note. Subscribers can find the complete deep dive note and financial model at our website here (link also in profile): msquaredcapital.com/vfcorp

$TGT hmmm. This type of headline might provide a clue..

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