Retail Stocks Show Relative Strength

At a time when the US consumer is supposed to be all but dead, retail stocks have been soaring. As shown below, the S&P 500 Retail group is up 51.29% since its low last November. Interestingly, when the overall market broke to new lows in early March, the Retail group failed to make a new low, which is indicative of its relative strength.

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Below we highlight the members of the S&P 500 Retail group. For each stock, we provide its year to date change and its change since the March 9th market lows. We also highlight the year to date change in short interest for each stock. As these names have rallied in 2009, short interest has also risen for the majority. Many of these companies are still struggling with fundamentals and have low analyst ratings as well. Quant funds and other institutions that have shorted these names have definitely felt pain in recent months.