Well, the cold weather has finally descended on St. Louis, which is a mixed blessing for local businesses. The unusually mild winter up to this point has been a problem for many local retailers that stocked up on snow shovels, ice-melt and the like. The independent snow removal services have been mostly idle – so far we have received less than half of the approximately 11 inches of snow and ice that meteorologists expect by this time of the year.

Of course, when the bad weather hits, it generates a whole different set of problems for local businesses. Productivity is lost as employees show up late – or don’t show up at all. Business travelers are often mired in whatever city they happen to be located when the flights are canceled and the airport closes. Deliveries can be delayed, whether of essential goods for local businesses or that package that you absolutely, positively needed by 10:00 a.m. today.

The lesson here is that what’s good for one business may spell disaster for another. I recently attended a real estate forecast presentation in which the speaker was cautiously optimistic that the market would improve – but only because commercial real estate occupancy rates and rents have hit rock bottom, and there is nowhere to go but up. Of course, on the other side of that coin, lots of vacancies and historically low rents are a blessing for companies looking for office space.

This month in NETWORK we have changed our approach to looking at stocks. Rather than continuing to indulge in our fantasy stock portfolio, we are examining the publicly traded stocks of local companies, and how they have fared in a recent 30-day period. The NETWORK Quotient is single number that represents the performance of these stocks, which in turn is a reflection of the health of St. Louis business in general.

When these companies succeed, St. Louis as a whole is more prosperous. And when they fail, you can be sure it is a windfall for another company – hopefully a local one – that rises in its place.

Regards,

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