Looking for your feedback... but first, an incredible true story you won't believe....

This is a story told by Peter Drucker, the famous management "guru". It sounds incredible, but it's worth paying attention to. This is more common than we might realize.

In the early 1950s, Peter Drucker was told a very strange thing by the chairman of Macy's, New York's largest Department Store.

Macy's chairman told him, "We don't know how to stop the growth of appliance sales."

"Why do you want to stop them?" Peter Drucker asked. It seemed quite a strange request. "Are you losing money on them?"

"On the contrary," the chairman said. "Profit margins are better than on fashion goods, there are no returns, and practically no pilferage."

So Peter Drucker tried another question. "Do the appliance customers keep away the fashion customers?" he asked.

"Oh, no," replied the chairman. "Where we used to sell appliances primarily to people who came in to buy fashions, now we sell fashions very often to people who come in to buy appliances."

This answer seemed very puzzling. But then the Macy's chairman continued to explain....

"In this kind of store it is normal and healthy for the fashion to produce 70% of sales. Appliance sales have grown so that they now account for three-fifths. And that's abnormal. We've tried everything we know to make fashion grow to restore the normal ratio, but nothing works. The only thing left now is to push appliance sales down to where they should be."

For almost 20 years after this conversation took place, Macy's sales drifted lower and lower.

Many "reasons" were found for this drift -- such as the decay of the inner city, because such a store was "too big," and plenty of other reasons.

However, when a new management team was brought in in 1970 and reversed the emphasis on fashion, and stopped trying to hinder the growth of appliance sales, Macy's sales and profits began to take off again.

At the same time that Macy's was trying to do what they could to cut down on appliance sales, Bloomingdale's (also in New York City) was noticing the same trend. They were even MORE of a fashion department store than Macy's, but their reaction was different.

Bloomingdale's decided to run with the opportunity. It realized that something unexpected was happening, and analyzed it. On the basis of that, it built a new position in the marketplace centered around it's Housewares Department. It also refocused its fashion sales to reach a new kind of customer -- the customers who were buying all the appliances.

By using these strategies based on the unexpected success they saw, Bloomingdale's catapulted itself from being the 4th most popular New York Department Store to 2nd spot.

While Macy's still has the biggest sales in volume, Bloomingdale's became "the smart New York store." While several other contenders -- such as Best -- disappeared altogether.

The point is that, unexpected success often reveals an underlying trend. If you don't grab the trend, you could be left behind....

Now I'll come to my question.... The thread about futures, day-trading, and so on, was pretty big! Clearly there's a lot of interest in this sort of thing, and in getting more information and discussion about it....

However, as many have noted, this is not really a "financial" discussion forum. However, I don't want to ignore the interest in this topic (and I'm quite interested in it myself too!)....

So, I'd like your feedback.... Do you think we should possibly....

- Also discuss these financial things on this forum (though this might alienate some of the regulars here)....

- Create a new forum where we could discuss this....

- Any other suggestions you may have....

What do you think?

I'm looking forward to your feedback!

Thanks, :)

Dien Rice