- What's The Real Retail Story?

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What's The Real Retail Story?

Market Watch

For the past several quarters, it's been the same routine: Visit the Growth Stock Wire website to see which ETFs are leading the market. Note that infrastructure, commodity, and defense stocks are on the short list of leaders.
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What's The Real Retail Story?

Thursday, 18 October 2007

By Chris Johnson
Last week, there was some confusion around the retail sector, with retail sales numbers clashing with government data. The former showed that most retailers fell below expectations...
in same-store sales, while the latter painted a stronger picture. So which should you listen too? From our perspective, neither. You should listen to investor expectations.

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Looking at the Retail HOLDRs (RTH) options activity (chart below, courtesy of Johnson Research Group), it's clear that investors have been loading up on calls as the holiday shopping season approaches. The current RTH volume put/call ratio has dropped to among its lowest readings of the past year. Similarly, short interest has been dropping on the group.

This activity tells us that sentiment toward the retail sector has become optimistic, despite the slowdown in retail sales, the slowdown in housing (which has clear implications on retail), and the questionable health of the consumer. For now, any type of mixed retail news will eventually result in lower prices, as investor expectations are higher than they should be. That makes it harder for the sector to impress.
Source : Investors Daily Edge

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