Christmas Shopping Strength: Luxury Purveyors vs. Discounters
Early data from the Christmas shopping season suggests that the consumer is more willing to spend than most pundits had anticipated.
In the deluge of December data to come, there will be answers to questions about how much consumers are spending, where they are buying, how important discounts are to their buying decisions, how much credit they are using, etc.
From a stock picking perspective, however, I am most interested in how upscale the purchases will be. Is this going to be a Tiffany’s (TIF) and Nordstrom (JWN) Christmas or will it be Zales (ZFC) and K-Mart (SHLD) under the tree? There are a number of ways to look at the high end vs. discounter equation, but I am going to offer up one that may simplify things a little.
Four months ago Claymore Advisors launched the Claymore/Robb Report Global Luxury Index ETF (ROB), with a list of holdings appropriate for those who own property on at least three continents. For the normal consumer, the S&P Retail Index has a much broader list of holdings that is more representative of where middle America
2 comments:
Bill,
Do you plan on doing another post on the VIX heading into the FOMC meeting. I found the ones you did in SEPT. to be very helpful.
Hi Morning,
I don't plan on updating the previous FOMC data any time soon. Frankly, I've been so busy trading these past few weeks that I barely have time to get any thoughts up on the blog.
For the record, I have pinned to the "Archive Highlights" in the right hand column of the blog two previous articles on the Fed:
1) Fed Links
2) VIX Price Movement Around FOMC Meetings
I suspect I'll be mostly in cash by the time the announcement comes around, but we'll see how the next week plays out.
Cheers,
-Bill
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