Holiday Sales At 6-Year High: Best Consumer ETFs & Stocks
Zacks Investment Research | Dec 27, 2017 09:52PM ET
This holiday season is the best in six years, reversing all the woes in the retail sector stemming from thousands of store closings and a large number of bankruptcies. This is especially true as sales (excluding automobile) climbed 4.9% between Nov 1 and Dec 24, representing the fastest growth since 2011, according to Mastercard's SpendingPulse report. Notably, online sales rose 18.1%.
Shoppers spent a record more than $800 billion during the holiday season boosted by growing consumer confidence, rising employment and early discounts. Electronics and appliances topped the shopping list with 7.5% growth – the strongest in 10 years. This was followed by sales increase of 5.9% for jewelry and 5.1% for home furnishings and home improvement. Per another firm Customer Growth Partners, shoppers spent $598 billion from the start of the holiday season to Christmas Eve, up from $565 billion for the same period last year.
Holiday sales growth is much better than what the National Retail Federation (NRF) had predicted. For the November-December period, NRF had projected holiday sales (excluding autos) to grow as much as 4%, and online sales to grow 11-15% (read: Zacks Investment Research
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