A market-wise reader:
“Dear Mr. Derbyshire—Hate to break the news, but ’sell HD, buy LOW’ has
already been done. Over the last five years, since Dec 3, 1999 Lowe’s stock
is up 112% while Home Depot is down 22% over the same period. LOW has
outperformed HD over the last 10 and 15 years as well, although if you go
back 20 years the HD outperformance over the entire period is phenomenal.
“It appears the best time to have swapped HD for LOW was late 1993 although
HD has had various periods of outperformance since then.”