Retail Sales Continue to Fall

July 9, 2009

stock ratings

Stock	Grade
ANF Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (Cl A)
AZO AutoZone Inc.
BBY Best Buy Co. Inc.
COST Costco Wholesale Corp.
FDO Family Dollar Stores Inc.
TGT Target Corp.

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This morning we got the June report on retail sales and once again, it showed poor results. Despite Family Dollar's (FDO) great results, sales are falling at Costco (COST) and Target (TGT). That's not a good sign.

Part of the reason for lower sales was due to bad weather in the Northeast. Still, Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) saw its same-store sales plunge by 32%. There are only a handful of retail names I like right now and they're mostly specialty retailers. Some of favorites include Autozone (AZO) and Best Buy (BBY).

The other news this morning is that jobless claims fell by 52,000 to 565,000 which was well below Wall Street's consensus. While this appears to be good news, there was some seasonal distortion from the auto industry. The bottom line is that the jobs market continues to look weak.

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