Trader Talk
- This Week's Biggest Story: The Dollar
- Corporate Issuance Continues at Torrid Pace
- The Bernanke Dollar Bounce & Gross Says Forget About Rate Hike
- Colgate Really Sparkles After Hours
- Light Volume Has Traders Complaining
- Gold Shatters Another Record
- Have Retailers Reached Their Limits?
- The Retail Mind Game
- The Gold Rush Is On
- Bernanke Offers Something For Everyone
TRADER TALK RSS FEED
MOST SHARED
- Analyze This?
- Realty Check: USDA Home Loans
- Health Care Bill Nears Test Vote
- The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed
- Dems Snare 60 Votes to Move Ahead on Health Care
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great
- Inside A Revolutionary Brain Cancer Treatment
- How Stock Investors Can Play Holiday Travel
- Time Lapse World Series Is A Great Play
- Hirschhorn: Greed...or Fear
- My Top 10 Tech Toys for the Holidays
- iPhone a Better Gaming Platform Than Android?
- May Day For Dendreon
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Holiday Tipping: Who And How Much
- Deep Discounts Should Make It a Very Tech-y Holiday
- The Richest Members of the US Congress
- New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
- Black Friday Deals May Not Signal Retail Comeback
- Thanksgiving Week Stuffed With Economic News
- UPS Sets New Rates For 2010
- Wall Street Jobs Slow to Return Despite Record Profits
- Investors to Goldman: Be Less Greedy
- Victoria's Secret Hopes to Rekindle Desire for Lingerie
- 'New Moon' Takes Record $72.7M Box Office Bite
Text Size 
CNBC Reporter
Retail and tech spending appear to be showing modest boosts, and that has been a major driver of stocks.
We all know the consumer is in tough shape, but retailers are in much better shape than last year:
1) Profits will be much higher than Q4 last year because margins are better. Remember November 2008? Remember those 50 percent off sales...in November! You won't see that this year because the inventories are far leaner, and the stores have cut personnel and all sorts of other costs. Yes there will be sales in December, but nothing like last year.
2) Some signs of life at the high end. Lots of comment about Nordstrom [JWN
Loading...
()
] likely posting a positive comp store sales number for the fourth quarter, indicating that at least some high end consumers are coming back.
Still, there are lots of unknowns:
1) CEOs have less idea than usual how the consumer is going to act at Christmas. There are some signs of optimism: JC Penney [JCP
Loading...
()
] said on their conference call this morning that they plan to be ahead of plan in November.
2) Consumer sentiment for November was below expectations; not a good sign for holiday sales.
3) Comparable store sales for the fourth quarter look to be flattish overall. That's a mild disappointment considering the disaster that was the fourth quarter of 2008.
_____________________________
- CNBC's Consumer Nation Blog - Keep Up on This Holiday Trends
- The Dow 30 in Real Time
- The CNBC Stock Blog
_____________________________
Questions? Comments?
POPULAR TRADER TALK POSTS
- This Week's Biggest Story: The Dollar
- Corporate Issuance Continues at Torrid Pace
- The Bernanke Dollar Bounce & Gross Says Forget About Rate Hike
- Colgate Really Sparkles After Hours
- Light Volume Has Traders Complaining
- Gold Shatters Another Record
- Have Retailers Reached Their Limits?
- The Retail Mind Game
- The Gold Rush Is On
- Bernanke Offers Something For Everyone
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes