Strong retail season this year?

[EE_]

What do you guys think?

I can hardly wait to see the retail numbers from this Christmas season. It must have been a banner year now the economy is now fully recovered. (signaled by the Fed taper)

With the Fed injecting so much money into the economy, the stock market making everyone wealthy, all the homes that were bought and people having gone back to work...oh, and everyone that has dumped their gold and silver. Money is everywhere!

Christmas trees all over the America must be jam-packed, stuffed with presents...just like the good ol days.

http://megandagata.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/christmas-tree-with-presents.jpg
http://www.newpublicaffairs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/christmas-tree-with-presents-underneath-tiatnufa.jpg

[Ponce]

Tell you what..... they are saving nothing for me at the "Senior Thrieft Store" here in town.......the darn place is full all the time.

V

[mick silver]

U.S. Store Traffic Sinks 21% as Last-Ditch Deals Flop

By Cotten Timberlake and Lindsey Rupp Dec 24, 2013 2:23 PM ET 60 Comments (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-23/shoppers-grab-sweeter-deals-in-last-minute-holiday-dash.html#disqus_thread) Email Print (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-12-23/shoppers-grab-sweeter-deals-in-last-minute-holiday-dash.html)




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http://www.bloomberg.com/image/iLLwkVfd1i4Q.jpg (http://www.bloomberg.com/photo/retail-sales-/-iNIrZHcj7oJg.html)Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg





U.S. store visits plummeted 21 percent and retail sales dropped 3.1 percent in the week through Dec. 22, signaling a lackluster finish for stores’ most important selling season, Chicago-based researcher ShopperTrak said yesterday.
Falling store traffic in recent weeks and uneven demand, especially for apparel, spurred chains to risk earnings by piling on the discounts to generate sales. Retailers including Neiman Marcus Group LLC were offering as much as 75 percent off, and some, including Macy’s and Kohl’s Corp., were keeping stores open around the clock starting Friday. At the same time, Americans are increasingly shopping onli

[mamboni]

This will be a very bad retail season:

1. store shelves are stocked full days before Christmas'
2. Many visitors to malls - very few shoppers. Most folk walking around without bags or carrying little
3. Maybe some increase in on line shopping, but malls were not moving product just three days before Christmas - that is a very bad omen.

[Jewboo]

http://i.imgur.com/OhmP8OE.jpg


:rolleyes:

[Spectrism]

http://i.imgur.com/OhmP8OE.jpg

The great Ghenghis Mamboni stands firm on the frozen tundra demanding that he will not visit any stores this holiday season in the year 1268 even if hell freezes over. Wearing his casual work clothes, he exerts powerful mental vibrations across the vast reaches of wasteland where lemmings run to and fro collecting up meaningless trinkets produced in thousands of enterprising huts. These micromanufacturing plants copy in cheap form the kinds of foreign bauble, imported by the sneaky Marco Polo, that can be fashioned with the lacking technology and endless manpower available. The great Ghenghis Mamboni strikes the frozen earth scoring the demand for his future generations to become doctors, mathematicians, astronomers and sanitation engineers..... anything but the offensive retailers, politicians, bankers, and knock-off manufacturers who sell crap to lemmings.

[EE_]

But, auto and new home sales are having a record year and the stock market/retail stocks keep going higher.
How could it not be a good season? We'll just have to wait for the numbers...

[Horn]

Its almost as if someone has turned the U.S. into Europe.

[Spectrism]

What do you guys think?

I can hardly wait to see the retail numbers from this Christmas season. It must have been a banner year now the economy is now fully recovered. (signaled by the Fed taper)

With the Fed injecting so much money into the economy, the stock market making everyone wealthy, all the homes that were bought and people having gone back to work...oh, and everyone that has dumped their gold and silver. Money is everywhere!



Yeah.... thinking about this is good. The fed has given enough money to banks that they have poured much into the stock market instead of lending... besides, there are fewer borrowers available anyway. AND, the bond market is crashing so money is running from there to stocks.... for now.

But is there really wealth in stocks? I would say yes- if and only if there remains a large market wishing to hold stocks. If the majority decide to dump their stocks, the prices crash and the paper wealth of today becomes lost digits on a computer. You can't eat stocks and you can't eat digits. Artificial wealth is a time gamble. Try to hold it too long and you end up losing it. If everyone tries to convert it to physical assets, it crashes quickly.

Since the plunge protection team has been keeping any crash from happening, look for the time when the plunge protection team is removed. Consider what will have to happen for this change. And you will know when the end is.

[ImaCannin]

Ima gonna say that the retail season is WAY down. In my neck of the woods, I did not notice that much of an increase in shopping. The times I ventured out, the stores were not that busy. With my own business, it was between needing life support and dead. I have never seen so many stores have "Black Friday" for a week at a time. Every other day Macy's had an ad in the paper for some super store super buy crap. I have not ventured out today, but am willing to bet that there is more shopping today when all is on sale than there has been all last week. I went shopping last year the day after Pegan day and got 1200.00 worth of clothes for about 250.00.

There are about 10 ads for jobs in the newspaper.

What ever retail sales numbers they come up with for the general public are gonna be a lie.

[Hitch]

I had the same experience as Ima. I went into a toy's r us store 2 days before Christmas to buy a bunch of gifts for all my nieces and nephews. I was dreading it, everytime in the past it was packed, a madhouse last minute rush to buy kid's their favorite gifts. This year, it was near empty. The shelves were full. I was in and out in an hour. I didn't even have to wait to check out, there was no line.

When I got outside I was relieved it was so easy. Then I thought about it, and it hit me. The crowds were there so kids would have a lot of gifts. Being empty meant less gifts for all the kids out there. As crazy as that sounds, it saddened me a bit. I wish it was packed and crazy of shoppers.

[Horn]

I wish it was packed and crazy of shoppers.

On the bright side, less purchases of Chinese toys,

could lessen the chances of them growing up living life in a dog cage like the Chinese.

[Cebu_4_2]

In the days leading up to Christmas we stopped at a walmart and the parking lot was almost completely full. Never saw it like that, we came back early the next day to find the same. Most I saw was about 1/3 of the lot full. We declined to go into that place, it's stupid nuts on normal days to imaging the BS going on.

[Shami-Amourae]

Personally I hope more people buy things online. Online shopping is pretty much the only way to get Made in America products. If you want to actually support our economy and not the Chinese/Indian economies, buy online and buy America.

[mick silver]

As the holiday shopping season accelerates with aggressive deals, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, joined other companies in painting a gloomy picture of consumer spending for the rest of the year.

Add to Portfolio

Walmart Stores Inc (http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/retailers-less-than-cheerful-over-christmas-sales.html)

Go to your Portfolio » (http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/portfolio/view/view.asp#sda)



While it posted a profit in its third-quarter earnings report (http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/2013/11/14/walmart-reports-q3-eps-of-114-updates-full-year-guidance-aggressive-holiday-plans-to-drive-sales) and beat analysts’ expectations, the company trimmed its forecast — citing persistent unemployment within its customer base, jitters over the government’s health care plans and tight budgets all around.
“Their income is going down while food costs are not,” William S. Simon, chief executive of Walmart, said of the company’s customer base. “Gas and energy prices, while they’re abating, I think they’re still eating up a big piece of the customer’s budget.”
Kohl’s, another retailer that caters to budget-conscious shoppers, also reported its third-quarter earnings on Thursday, but it missed analyst expectations altogether.
“Let’s be clear: we’re disappointed in the third-quarter results,” said Kevin Mansell, Kohl’s chief executive.
But just one day earlier, Macy’s, which serves more of a middle- and higher-income market, looked far more comfortable. The company beat analyst expectations handily and posted strong gains on the stock market in its third-quarter earnings, which were announced Wednesday.
Ken Perkins, president of the research firm Retail Metrics, said Walmart’s core customers had been under sustained economic pressure, unable to increase their spending while more affluent consumers are willing to expand their budgets. “It does feel like a higher-end, lower-end kind of story,” he said. “The upper-income consumer is faring much better and will spend more.”
A Gallup poll released on Thursday buttressed retailers’ forecasts of relatively flat overall holiday sales, or those that are just barely better than last year. The average amount that Americans expect to spend on Christmas gifts, according to a survey (http://www.gallup.com/poll/165872/americans-trimming-holiday-spending-plans.aspx/) conducted Nov. 7 to 10, is about $704, down from $786 in an October poll, and $66 on average below the $770 they planned to spend at this time last year, according to Gallup.
Given the worrisome landscape, Mr. Simon of Walmart said he expected the holiday season to be “about as competitive of a market as we’ve ever seen.”
And Faye Landes, an analyst at Cowen and Company, said she would not be eager to compete against Walmart.
“They’re going to price very aggressively,” Ms. Landes said. “They’ll steal traffic in a low-traffic environment.”
On Thursday, company executives promoted their low holiday prices, like a 32-inch LED television for $98. And the 16-gigabyte iPad mini, priced at $299, will come with a $100 Walmart gift card.
Walmart’s profits rose 2.8 percent, to $3.74 billion, in the third quarter, or $1.14 a share, the company reported Thursday. Analysts were expecting $1.13 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. But sales in United States stores that have been open at least a year, an important measure the company’s health, slipped 0.3 percent, excluding fuel.
Ms. Landes said the company was doing worse overseas. Store traffic in China declined 8 percent this quarter, and Ms. Landes said that measurement had not been positive since the fourth quarter of 2011.
Kohls reported that its net income fell 18 percent from the same period a year ago, to $177 million from $215 million. Kohl’s said it had earnings (http://www.kohlscorporation.com/InvestorRelations/Investor01.htm) of 81 cents per share, while analysts had expected 86 cents.
At Macy’s, the view heading into the holidays is upbeat.
The company posted third-quarter earnings of 47 cents a share, a 31 percent increase over last year, and above analyst estimates of 39 cents for the quarter.
“We were able to achieve a very successful third quarter of 2013, despite the tepid economic climate,” Terry J. Lundgren, chief executive of Macy’s said in a statement. “Both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s performed well in the quarter, and we saw improvement in the sales trend in every region of the country compared with the spring season.”
Walmart’s customer base still faces uncertainty, depending on how a drawdown of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus program affects its customers. Perhaps most immediately, cuts to food stamps, which began this month and affected more than 47 million people, are being watched closely. Although many Walmart customers receive food stamps and will have less of them to spend, the increased pressure on budgets could drive even more customers into the arms of Walmart and its deep discounts.
Mr. Simon said it was too early to assess the impact of the food stamp cuts, but he added that the federal government shutdown and repeated budget standoffs in Washington had only contributed to a darkened customer mood.
“Consumer confidence is an important aspect to retail,” Mr. Simon said. “I think until the issues are resolved that are making news these days, we’re not going to see a very large rebound in the middle of the economy and in consumer confidence.”

[mick silver]

BBC News - HMV reports Christmas sales slump (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&ved=0CFsQFjADOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fbusiness-16465170&ei=XoO9UpWGIo-EogSesYKoAQ&usg=AFQjCNHq1OFHcRHvmVJW7SFE1caEMFBJeQ&bvm=bv.58187178,d.cGU)www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16465170‎

Jan 9, 2012 - Troubled retailer HMV reports a sharp fall in sales for the Christmas period but notes a slowing in the decline of its music and film business

[EE_]

But, UPS was swamped...they couldn't even deliver all the packages.