Retail Stocks Soar Despite Market Slide
Retail Stocks Soar Despite Market Slide
A 6.6% decrease in home sales for October was not enough to rid the market of inflation worries, as the major stock indexes all finished the session lower. Retail stocks, however, were the bright spot of the day, as optimism about increased holiday sales lifted the sector higher. The retail index [RLX.X>RLX.X] rose nearly 2% and was the top-performing sector of the day.
For the day, the Dow fell 40.99 to 10947.92, the Nasdaq dropped 26.44 to 3421.37 and the S&P 500 slid 8.79 to 1407.83.
Retail stocks posting solid gains were Dayton Hudson [DH>DH], up 4 1/4 to 71, Best Buy [BBY>BBY] up 8 3/4 to 66 5/8 and Tandy [TAN>TAN] up 4 5/16 to 77 7/16. Online retailers or “e-tailers†also showed early strength but sold off toward the end of the day. Etoys [ETYS>ETYS] finished up 7/16 at 67 1/16 and Amazon [AMZN>AMZN] traded as high as 96 7/8 before finishing the day down 2 11/16 at 90 7/16.
Weakness was seen in the banks and broker dealers as JP Morgan [JPM>JPM] fell 2 1/16 to 131 1/2, Bank of America [BAC>BAC] fell 3 9/16 to 56 15/16 and Merrill Lynch [MER>MER] dropped 3 3/4 to 79 9/16.