HOW’S THAT TARGET BATHROOM THINGIE GOING? (CONT.)

(NOTE:  This is largely the same blog I wrote on April 30th.  The only difference is the numbers, which now go through Friday, May 13).

I’ll make this short and to the point:

On April 19th, Target, the country’s second-largest retailer, announced that the bathrooms in its stores were “anything goes” – i.e. men could use the women’s room, if they claimed to be transgender (no way to know, no way to tell for sure).

Days later, a conservative, “traditional values” organization, the American Family Association, started an online boycott of of the chain.  It claims that, in the first week, over 1,000,000 people have  signed on and pledged not to shop at Target because of this policy.

So how are things working out so far?

From April 19th to April 30th, when I first blogged about this, the Dow Jones average went  from 18,053 to 17,773 -a drop of about1.6%.  But, in that same time period, Target’s stock went from $84.14 to $79.27 – a drop of 5.8%, and a loss of about $2.5 billion in value.

Here are the new data:

From April 19th to yesterday’s close (May 13), the Dow Jones average went  from 18,053 to 17,532 -a drop of about 2.9%.

But, in that same time period, Target’s stock went from $84.14 to $73.90 – a drop of 12.2%.

In money terms, since April 13, Target has lost over $5 billion dollars in value.

Is this just a coincidence?  There is no way to tell for sure.

But it is hard not to at least consider the possibility of cause and effect.

We’ll look in again at a future date and see where things are moving.