Want to bet on Black Friday and Cyber Monday results? Here are some ETFs to watch

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, as Wall Street kicks off the shortened Thanksgiving trading week. Friday will bring the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season, with data about the early results likely to begin hitting the wires over the weekend.

This puts the spotlight on exchange traded funds that are tied to the retail, ecommerce and consumer discretionary goods spaces. At the same time, investors will also look to potential movement in shipping and freight ETFs, with that industry at the center of the holiday market kickoff.

Retail/ E-commerce ETFs

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the busiest shopping days of the year. Taking center stage are popular retail names like Macy’s (M), Kohl's Corporation (KSS), Gap (GPS), Target (TGT) and Walmart (WMT), among many other smaller names. Beyond these traditional brick-and-mortar names, online giants like Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA) and eBay (EBAY) will be in focus as well.

For a diversified approach to playing the incoming Black Friday data, retail funds, such as the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (NYSEARCA:XRT) and VanEck Retail ETF (NASDAQ:RTH), have a blended group of popular retail stocks.

XRT and RTH are similar in nature as both offer access to the retail space. However, RTH has significantly outperformed XRT in 2022. Year-to-date RTH is -13.8% while XRT is -28.1%. Moreover, both funds are attached with a 0.35% expense ratio and combined have more than $586M assets under management.

Two other ETFs that are on the radar are the ecommerce-focused Amplify Online Retail ETF (IBUY) and ProShares Online Retail ETF (ONLN). Both have suffered large 2022 losses with IBUY down 52.5% and ONLN lower by 46.9%.

Consumer Discretionary Goods ETFs

The consumer discretionary sector is another area of interest as holiday shopping hopes to take off. Tesla (TSLA) marks one of the biggest names in the group, although Elon Musk's EV maker is not likely to be leveraged to incoming Black Friday data. However, names like Nike (NKE) could see movement based on the details of holiday shopping.

Turning to ETFs, consumer discretionary funds that may find themselves poised for price movements are the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLY), Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF (NYSEARCA:VCR), Fidelity MSCI Consumer Discretionary Index ETF (FDIS), and the Invesco Dynamic Leisure & Entertainment ETF (PEJ).

Shipping & Freight ETFs

As goods and services move off the shelves, shipping and freight firms such as FedEx (FDX) and UPS (UPS), along with other logistics and transport names, could take the stage. Exchange traded funds that track this key sector include iShares U.S. Transportation ETF (IYT), Pacer Industrials and Logistics ETF (SHPP), U.S. Global Sea to Sky Cargo ETF (SEA) and the SonicShares Global Shipping ETF (BOAT).

In broader market news, major market averages opened the holiday-shortened trading week lower, as they followed a global risk-off trend as worries grew that China would return to zero-COVID.