CITI: RETAILERS LOOK “WORRISOME”
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Retail stocks continue to hit new 52 week highs just about every day. As we noted last week, the discrepancy between the retail stocks and reality appears to be growing with every uptick. Citi recently issued a note expressing the same belief:
“The S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary sector’s Retailing industry group looks worrisome. While retailing stocks have been very powerful performers this year, up almost 2x the S&P 500’s gain year to date, there are several reasons to become concerned about the group’s potential trading trends in the next year, ranging from fundamentals, to earnings revision momentum and to valuation. Moreover, potential equity market weakness mid-year could generate meaningful near-term profit-taking as portfolio manager conviction seems shallow. Therefore, a “downgrade watch” alert from Market Weight is appropriate.”
Source: Citi Research
