Today's retail sales report for the month of November gave encouraging news on the health of the US economy as headline (0.8% versus 0.5%) and core retail sales (1.2% versus 0.6%) both easily surpassed economists' forecasts.
Looking at the individual sub groups within today's retail sales report provides a quick overview of which sectors are doing well and which are lagging. Of the thirteen groups, only five saw declines and two others saw a smaller monthly increase than the total headline number.
In light of today's earnings news from Best Buy (BBY), one sector of interest is electronics and appliances. During the month of November, this group saw a month over month decline of 0.62%.
Last month's decline is also part of a longer term trend for the sector whereby it has seen its share of total retail sales steadily erode in recent years. At a current level of 2.27% of total sales, the share of total sales for electronics and appliances is at its lowest level in over nine years.
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At the same time that electronic and appliance retailers are seeing their share of total sales decline, one group benefitting at their expense is non-store retailers, a.k.a. internet retailers. This group's share of total sales is now at a record high of 8.33%. Ten years ago, its total share of sales was only 5.8%.
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Although some would argue that today's sell-off in BBY is overdone, with trends like the ones above in place, it seems likely that the performance spread between stocks like BBY and Amazon.com (AMZN) will continue to widen.
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Disclosure: No positions
