FXD

The National Retail Federation held a holiday sales call this morning. The outlook for the holiday season is bright. The NRF notes that consumers have been engaged at a strong

According to the Verizon Business Retail Trends Report, online retailers are booming as COVID-19 restrictions led to an increase in online shopping this holiday season.As per the National Retail Federation

Retail sales rose for the sixth month in a row in October, with sales significantly better than the same time a year ago with some holiday shopping pulled forward.Retail sales

Retail sales and food-services spending posted a strong gain in September.The September gain was the fifth in a row.Core retail sales, which exclude motor vehicles and gasoline retailers, posted a 1.5 percent gain for the month.Unit vehicle sales, reported earlier in the month, have also staged a very solid recovery.Results across the various categories of retailers were mostly positive in September.

US retail sales are incredibly strong, rising 1.9% month-on-month versus 0.8% consensus.Strength was broad based with 12 out of 13 categories reporting a rise.Nonetheless, we shouldn't take too much away from what was a very good report, which saw sporting goods up 5.7%, health spending up 1.7% and eating/drinking out up 2.1%.

Among the largest names in retail, as represented by the MVIS U.S. Listed Retail 25 Index, the differences between winners and losers this year is dramatic.The difference separating many of the names into winners and losers is their ability to leverage not only ecommerce, but all channels of marketing to facilitate engagement with their brand.

Retail sales climbed back to record levels in June and continued to grow in July and August - despite painful levels of unemployment and income loss.But the good times will not last much longer: The massive government income support programs that funded consumer spending are ending, while shoppers will need to resume normal household necessities.Absent additional government interventions - which seem increasingly unlikely - retail sales will soon fall again and remain depressed until the pandemic eases and the economy recovers.

Ecommerce allowed us to continue buying things we probably wouldn't have been able to buy otherwise.Consumer adoption of ecommerce is probably going to be sticky as concerns about the virus fade.Retailers winning during the pandemic were in the right categories and had a strong OMNI channel offering.