Headline: Starbucks to Close 600 Stores

By my estimates, assuming 3000 caffeine-addicted ‘regulars’ per store, this will displace 1.8 million Starbucks customers. Now they’ll have to walk another 40 feet to go the Starbucks across the street from the one they normally go to, since their store is closing.

I was convinced we could be in the middle of a nuclear war, and somebody would still be sipping a cafe latte at their local Starbucks. Guess the shiny has worn off now that push has come to shove. Or, maybe the world’s starting to realize a $6 cup of coffee is still just coffee.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that a true market bottom would be marked by a huge number of stocks hitting new lows on the New York Stock Exchange. We’ve been getting closer to the ‘too many’ level over the last few days, and we really got close yesterday. But, we’re not quite there yet.

We saw 622 new NYSE lows made on Tuesday. That’s a ton. If this were 2005 that would be a great sign of a bottom. This is 2008 though, and we’re trading in the shadow of a major bear market move - a lot of stocks are or should be hitting new lows with the market at or near 52-week lows. (We’ve seen days where close to 1000 stocks were hitting new lows, and that was well before we got into this shape.)

In other words, I don’t think we’ve seen a short-term capitulation yet. We’re close though.

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