Inspector Garmin: Go Gadget Go!

It has been more than ten years since the Garmin craze in the middle of last decade, when driving past cars at night and seeing the glow of a cool-looking Quest and then Nüvi was practically a status symbol. 

Since then, the navigation hardware has practically become a casualty of capitalism's creative destruction, with step-by-step voice directions on Google Maps off a smartphone providing a much cheaper alternative. 

However, Garmin's ability to pivot as a firm has been vastly underrated. In other words, Garmin did not hang its head like a loser in the face of adversity. Instead, it got busy reinventing itself.

And now the stock is pushing highs not seen since 2014. Granted, GRMN is still well below its 2007 peak of $125.68. 

But after its latest winning earnings report, the daily chart, below, is sporting a high and tight bull flag pattern, as one of our Members astutely pointed out yesterday. 

What adjustments did Garmin make? They focused on wearable, tech gadgets such as outdoor watches and marine cameras, and generally recognized that if they shifted to outdoor, marine, and aviation devices there would be niche, steady demand. And the margins on some of those products are very high, reinforcing the firm's strong fundamentals. 

Indeed, the whippersnappers at SNAP (no pun intended) would be wise to take a page out of Inspector Garmin's business school playbook.