Three reasons to short Tesco

Warren Buffett is sniffing around the world's third biggest retailer - and that can only mean one thing. Tim Bennett reveals the three flashing signals that tell you now is the time to short Tesco.

Tesco, the world's number three retailer, is having an unusually torrid time British sales fell for the fourth quarter in a row recently. Here are three reasons why spread betters can assume this pain will continue for now.

First off, Tesco is not just exposed to the food market. It also sells big-ticket items of the sort that consumers are cutting back on most heavily. While food staples are essential items, clothes and electrical goods are not. That's in part why Tesco is suffering more than, say, Morrisons or J Sainsbury's on the sales front. Worryingly, even a massive £500m price cutting promotion ahead of the crucial Christmas season has not injected any extra oomph into the numbers.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.