The past few years have not been kind to retail stocks, with the ascension of Amazon.com (AMZN) coming at the expense of numerous brick-and-mortar stores. Even diversified retail ETFs haven’t been spared, with many posting significantly worse returns than the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. But the industry could be ready to turn the corner.
Big-picture, traditional retail companies are becoming more adept at peddling their wares online and are at least starting to push back. Walmart (WMT) bought Jet.com and numerous other e-commerce operators over the past few years, igniting explosive growth in its online sales. And Williams-Sonoma’s (WSM) website now drives more than half of the company’s revenues.
Also, Black Friday and the holiday season could provide a boost to the entire industry. Deloitte, Kantar Retail and the National Retail Federation are all forecasting increases of between 3.7% and 4.5% in holiday sales for 2017. (Kiplinger is forecasting a 15% jump in e-commerce sales for the full year.) Moreover, retail stocks have developed a trend of slightly outperforming the broader market since the end of the 2007-09 bear market.
This could trigger at least a short-term reversal of fortunes for a handful of retail funds – including those that have more invested in e-commerce operators, as well as those that incorporate other areas of the consumer space. Check out these seven retail ETFs that may perk up for the holidays.
SEE ALSO: Kiplinger’s 20 Best ETFs
Permalink — https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/T022-S001-7-best-retail-etfs-for-the-holidays/index.html
URL of source article.
Date — November 9, 2017 5:00 am
Publish date of source article.
Source — http://www.kiplinger.com/about/rss/kiplinger.rss
URL of RSS feed.
