How Good Were Holiday Sales Really?

The usually suspects just spent 5 minutes talking about walmart, and 1 minute talking about how bad everyone else was.

1) How bad would things look if gift cards were taken into consideration?

2) Has anyone noticed that the loudest voices predicting a recession are coming from screaming baby investment banks? The same ones that embodied stupidism recently.

3) I saw a piece on national TV this morning about a manufacturing company (I don’t remember which) where a massive 130 jobs will disappear. It was described as a national crisis.

While there is undeniably a slowdown, panic appears to be the order of the day for the media, who report this bilge without analysis or perspective.

market got pushed up in anticipation of the retail news…..and BR still thinks no one is calling the shots at the lows……..too funny…go look at the I-day SPY(1 minute) chart and then tell me you still think it’s left to it’s own designs

BTW Cinefoz that was A furniture co. in N. Carolina…hardly a cause to ring the alarm bells. ALl they needed to do was step over to Wall Street where the ax will be swung for a more relevant example.

It’s pretty sad that we have just accepted that it’s ok to manipulate the markets just as long as you are able to react quickly enough to enrich yourself. I, too , folllow this practice however it really shows what the biggest problem our market has….itself.

Ciao
MS

Dollars to donuts Walmart’s increase is entirely attributable to the increase in food sales. More and more, it’s becoming a grocery story and we all know the impact of food inflation.

WalMart is the poor mans Costco.

Walmart is to some degree an “inferior” retail establishment. Remember good old Macro Econ 101 when “inferior goods” do better when economic conditions decline. People that need a new car go and buy a Kia because they can’t afford the Honda. Well I think a lot of folks stoped shopping at Macys and Abercrombie to get their goods from Walmart this Christmas.

Weak December Sales for Retailers

The nation’s big retail chains, a closely watched barometer of economic health, reported dreary December sales on Thursday, which may stoke fears of a recessionary downtown.

Sales fell at chains as varied as Nordstrom, Macy’s, Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters when compared with those in the period a year earlier.

Stores cited a pullback in spending by consumers and a quirk in the calendar that pushed more holiday shopping days into November than December.

The size of the sales declines surprised analysts. Sales fell 11.4 percent at Kohl’s, 7.5 percent at J. C. Penney and 6 percent at Gap.

Even seemingly invincible stores, like the discounter Target, struggled. Sales fell 5 percent without adjusting for a shift in the calendar.

But sales rose 2.7 percent Wal-Mart, whose relentless price-cutting appeared to resonate with anxious shoppers.

“Consumers clearly tightened purse strings this holiday season,” said Ken Perkins, the president of Retail Metrics, a research firm.

Dozens of retailers are reporting sales at stores open at least a year, a crucial yardstick in retailing because it excludes business at new and closed stores, which tend to distort performance.

Even if consumers had not cut back, retailers had expected a lackluster month because of the calendar shift. So stores encouraged investors to look at the average sales for November and December combined. On that basis, overall retail sales rose 1.7 percent, the weakest performance since 2002, according to Retail Metrics.

Macy’s, for example, said sales fell 7.9 percent in December and 1.1 percent for November and December combined.

“After a strong November, we had hoped that a more positive sales trend would continue through December,” said the chief executive of Macy’s, Terry J. Lundgren. “But macroeconomic trends led customers to spend cautiously for the holiday.”

Target said that, with the calendar shift factored in, its sales rose 0.6 percent, an unusually low number for the chain. Target’s chief executive, Robert Ulrich, said earnings for the last three months of the year would probably fall compared with results in the period a year earlier.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, stood apart from its rivals. It appeared to snatch business from competitors by staging deep, early morning discounts every weekend throughout November, a tactic generally reserved for the day after Thanksgiving.

Even so, Wal-Mart said consumers flocked to its food, pharmacy and electronics departments, which are not as profitable as its clothing and housewares.

Clothing chains at the mall had trouble attracting consumers. Sales fell 6.2 percent at Hot Topic, 6 percent at Gap, 2 percent at American Eagle Outfitters and 2 percent at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Department stores did not fare much better. Nordstrom said sales fell 4 percent. J. C. Penney, which reported a bleak December, predicted sales would fall in January, too.

MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company, said sales of women’s clothing and jewelry, two pillars of department-store shopping, fell in December.