The Week Ahead – Retail Therapy

Welcome to “The Week Ahead” where we take a moment to provide our thoughts on what we can expect in markets and the economy during the upcoming week.

As we enter earnings season, retailers are beginning to announce results from the all-important holiday season. I can personally attest that I tried going to my local mall on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and could not find a single available parking space. After driving around for 10 minutes, I simply gave up and left.

Fun fact: The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black”.

Overall, we know that sales were up nicely. Black Friday sales hit a new record of $6.2 billion; a 23.6% increase! The following Monday, dubbed Cyber Monday, also saw sales jump to $7.9 billion, a 19.7% increase year-over-year. Of these sales, 60% came from desktops, while 40% came from mobile devices. Interestingly, shopping on mobile devices grew by 55.6% over last year.

The trend was clearly the continued inexorable shift toward buying online. Unfortunately, brick & mortar companies didn’t fare as well. The late economist, Joseph Schumpeter, called these shifts in behavior “creative destruction”. Last week, Macy’s reported a paltry 1.1% gain in sales during the holiday period. Kohl’s too saw a weak rise in same-store sales during the November-December months.

Since two-thirds of our economy is driven by consumer spending, it will be interesting to see the full picture when the retail sales number is reported on Tuesday. Preliminary evidence is that the results will be strong, but we’re already seeing some signs that those retailers that have failed at keeping up with the trend towards online shopping continue to fall behind the competition.

Data deck for January 14-18: