Ever wonder why retailers aren’t doing so well? Here’s a huge reason for it: Traditional retailers such as Sears, The Bay, Macy’s and the likes take 9 to 13 months to get a new clothing line from concept to production and into their stores to sell. Zella is a company with an extensive line of clothing. They can get an idea to production and into stores inside of two weeks! Two weeks versus a year. Wonder no longer why traditional retailers are fading quickly.

On the upside, Thursday Amazon announced they’d be selling Kenworth appliances online. Yes, Sears does have stuff people want – but now it’ll be online and in the U.S. only for the time being.

That announcement also shows why you and I really can’t do our own investing very well: When Amazon announced they’d be selling Kenworth, the stocks of other appliance retailers and manufacturers dropped by $12.5 billion collectively. From Best Buy to Whirlpool, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and the likes their stocks took a big hit. Now you and I may have figured out in a few days that, instead of Kenworth being gone, they’re now going to be a major player with Amazon behind them, but the Bay and Wall Street computers made the sell moves within a minute…

Speaking of investments, I’m going to make a bold prediction if you remember that I’m not an economist: The Bank of Canada can’t and won’t raise rates again until the U.S. does. The rate increase two weeks ago was based on thinking the U.S. would do one, too and they didn’t. The dollar is now way too high for our exporters and getting the dollar down is the main objective of the Bank of Canada. So they can’t do another increase, even if they wanted to, until the U.S. starts to raise them again.

Bad for savers, good for borrowers to get another reprieve…