7 Retailers Near 52-Week Lows

If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.

Here, I'll try to do the initial legwork for you. To prevent us from being inundated with scores of disparate companies, I'll conduct my search by industry. This will allow us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.

Today, let's look at apparel (i.e., clothing) retailer stocks. Below, are the seven companies in this space that are within 20% of their 52-week lows and have market caps above $200 million.

Company	Recent Price	52-Week Low	52-Week High	P/E Ratio (trailing)
Gap (NYSE: GPS  )	$18.84	$16.60	$23.73	10.3
Urban Outfitters (Nasdaq: URBN  )	$31.02	$28.00	$39.26	20.6
American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO  )	$13.57	$11.60	$17.46	15.7
Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO  )	$16.99	$17.00	$31.05	7.7
Children's Place Retail Stores (Nasdaq: PLCE  )	$46.81	$39.80	$57.63	14.9
Collective Brands (NYSE: PSS  )	$13.86	$12.40	$23.96	10.6
Citi Trends (Nasdaq: CTRN  )	$15.65	$14.70	$34.52	11.0

Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Yahoo! Finance.

If you're a value-based investor like me, Gap seems to constantly be on these types of lists. But the one that pops out to me is Aeropostale. It's hugging its 52-week low and is down to a trailing P/E ratio of 7.7. You'll want to pay close attention when it reports earnings on Aug. 18. Analysts are only expecting $0.13 per share in earnings vs. $0.46 last year. If that comes to fruition, that 7.7 P/E ratio isn't quite as cheap as advertised. Still, it's cheap enough to look into. Collective Brands and Citi Trends are also near single-digit P/E ratios.

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