Are we at the Peak of Retail?

Coming off the tails of an incredibly strong Target Quarterly report, retail industry analysts are speculating that this is as good as it gets. Target is not the only brick-and-mortar to have an excellent quarter, with Nordstrom and Walmart also beating the Street in their quarterlies.

Some key takeaways from Targets Quarterly:

Same-store sales rose at the fastest rate in more than a decade
Total revenue climbed 6.9% to $17.78 billion

Not even two years ago, Target was fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat. Target had a rough time, ceasing operations in Canada, and losing customers to the e-commerce giants of Amazon and Walmart.

What analysts and economists are worrying about, is that everyone in the retail space, from Amazon to TJ Maxx and Sam's Club, is only thriving due to an unprecedented bull run in the US economy.

Retail is highly dependent on disposable income, and in these great times, people have a lot of disposable income. With that being said, a cyclical industry like retail, can be hit incredibly hard in a recessionary gap. With that being said, I'm going to have to side with this analyst from MKM Partners, who says that it can only go down from here.

Do you think we're at the top of the mountain here? OR is there still room for the retail industry to grow along with the economy?

2 Comments
 

good points. for me, im not sure if it can only go down from here however it might continue to go a bit higher into the holidays because of the tax cut but consumer debt is hitting new records constantly and with rates rising as well, consumers are going to have to start focusing sooner than later on paying down those credit cards etc rather than making new purchases and thus slowing things down.

 
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