Dump KMart (Sears ?) stock if you have it still .... I have not seen a “clean and well-attended” KMart in 2-1/2 years anywhere in the US in any of about 36 different cities..
Dollar General now carries the same quality and selection of (cheap, Chinese-made) stuff as KMart in more stores. Sears “Might” hang on if Penny’s goes low enough.
The salespeople at K-Mart are second rate.
Kmart’s error IMHO came from buying Sears and not taking advantage of the opportunity to shed the Kmart brand, rebranding (and retooling) all their former stores into new Sears stores. But that was just one of a fairly long series of stupid moves, such as taking on Walmart/Sam’s with the Pace warehouses; pulling the plug on the Pace warehouses rather than tweaking them to get it right (like beating Sam’s to various cities), losing more money in the process; buying or starting new brands of specialty stores (I think Builder’s Square was one; a bookstore chain was another, right near the beginning of the digital downloading revolution) while (to my memory) failing to move into growth areas (we have RiteAid, Walgreen, and CVS popping up like mushrooms, one of those chains would have made a good partner or acquisition; same goes for the cash-and-carry discount grocery stores like Aldi and Savalot; same went for electronics category killers like MediaPlay, Circuit City, Yes, and oh yeah, Best Buy).
Dollar General has started to surge back these past few years, but is a direct competitor to Family Dollar, not Kmart. They used to be crappy versions of Family Dollar, and came in about the same time, but basically all but one vanished probably no more recently than ten years ago. I’m not too sure the one that used to be up on Plainfield by Fat Boy survived that either.
Family Dollar stores are more familiar to me, they bring a miniature version of the department store or actually the old ‘dry goods’ stores, back to the ‘hood, tending to be built in financially iffy areas where local shopping had been almost beyond human memory.
The Family Dollar up on eastern Leonard St in Grand Rapids is literally nextdoor to a Savealot, and stocks inexpensive (and sometimes attractive) home decor alongside laundry soaps, other cleaning stuff, kitchen utensils, low-end electronics, cigarettes (that’s pretty recent I think), refill cards for mobile, prepaid credit cards, and some basic, high-volume grocery items like milk.
I agree that Kmart stock is probably not a great idea, but that goes for retail more generally; as part of a diversified portfolio, having a little tied up in a group of retail stocks probably makes sense, since the US economy is mostly about selling stuff rather than making stuff. The only assets of Kmart that may be worth something here and there are the property on which the stores stand.
I had a family member who worked for decades for Kmart; as the decline began (this is in the area of 30-35 years already) she lost what had been a cheerful enthusiasm for working there when the company (run by a topheavy group of golden-parachute types) started to cut hours, benefits, and staff. It was the unimaginative bean-counters who destroyed Kmart’s future prospects, and that opened the opportunity for Target and Walmart — and yet it’s generally portrayed as the other way around.