The reason I’m shorting Harley-Davidson (HOG)

I decided to buy the $23, 1/15/27 puts for Harley-Davidson. I’ve been doing some research and have come to the conclusion that this would make a good short:

1. As a whole, they have failed to market to a younger demographic for the past decade or longer. The only people who I ever see on Harley’s are all older and have had their bikes for 10+ years. As their customers age and die, so does their business. Also, the two Harley stores (in my state at least) have become very rundown, dingy, poorly run operations.

2. Increasing costs to produce motorcycles due to tariffs. When your motorcycles cost $40,000 already, this can affect it pretty heavily.

3. Motorcycles are a luxury item. Especially Harley’s. When economic conditions are rough, there’s not many people willing to spend that kind of money on a non-essential item. If the market got even worse, it wouldn’t be good for Harley-Davidson.

4. Heavy revenue decline since 2023. Again, I think this is primarily related to their aging customer base.

5. Motorcycles sales have been heavily declining the past few years as well. I think it has become pretty well known that the general consensus is “motorcycles are dangerous”. Anyone who rides motorcycles, knows someone who has been injured or killed on a bike. It is not very uncommon in the community.

6. The overall state of the market makes me nervous. Everything’s great until it isn’t and I want to have a hedge against a potential downturn in the market. I think this company would be more heavily affected than anything else I could choose from.

Those are the main points. I’m sure there are some more that you guys could think of but I thought I would share what I thought about Harley Davidson.