Retailers have begun releasing the results of their holiday season. Normally we would see some clear winners and some clear losers based on holiday gift giving trends or who had the best promotions. This year however investors have been shocked by the additional news that retailers have been offering.
As the first full week of the new year begun the markets have all been excited at the possibilities of another great year...Except the retail sector. Countless number of stores have come out with horrible holiday shopping numbers AND in addition have announced new store closings. Some of these companies were already in the process of closing stores.
Macy's (NYSE: M) caught the attention of traders as they announced horrible shopping numbers but added that they will be cutting over six thousand jobs. This as they continue to close over 100 stores and cut their earnings projections for the year. Shares lost almost 14% on Thursday alone.
Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) is having similar issues. They had a weak holiday season and added that they would cut their profit target for 2017. Shares were down almost 20% on that news.
These are just the names that were in focus this week. The truth is that there are eight other names that are either closing stores or taking some kind of evasive action to try and stay profitable. So whats going on? Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) that's whats going on.
Its no secret that Amazon has been clawing their way into the traditional retail consumers customer base and they have been doing a great job at it. It seems that Amazon can do no wrong by consumers and is slowly becoming the only major player.
So does this mean that all retail stocks are bad? Of course not. There are a group of stocks that investors are calling Amazon "resistant". Costco (NASDAQ: COST) would be a good example of that. Their model is such that it can continue to compete with Amazon for now. Of course if some of these retail stocks worry you then you can always look at a sector ETF such as the (NYSE: XRT)