{"id":355,"date":"2010-02-19T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T15:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=355"},"modified":"2018-08-21T09:10:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T13:10:41","slug":"ironically-good-same-store-sales-at-wal-mart-were-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/02\/19\/ironically-good-same-store-sales-at-wal-mart-were-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Ironically good, same-store sales at Wal-Mart were down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">That massive retail business, Wal-Mart, has reported its same store sales in the fourth-quarter declined 1.6%.\u00a0 This compares to a fourth quarter increase in consumer-spending of 2%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Analysis:<\/strong> Wal-Mart has bucked the retail trend since the start of the recession and continually reported numbers that bested its rivals.\u00a0 However, because of the Company&#8217;s discount image, many consumers who are not regular Wal-Mart shoppers gravitated to the store as fears of a deep recession increased.\u00a0 In effect, they were substituting Wal-Mart&#8217;s wares for what, and where, they used to shop.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">So my guess is that\u00a0as the consumer feels better about herself, she is returning to\u00a0the retailers that were previously preferred to Wal-Mart.\u00a0 We can confirm this\u00a0by getting\u00a0a little bit more data.\u00a0 Lo and behold, both Macy&#8217;s and Nordstrom&#8217;s, two higher-end retailers both reported same store growth of 3.4% and 14%, respectively.\u00a0 While Target&#8217;s sales increased a meager 0.5%.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">These numbers strongly suggest that a portion of the U.S. consumer market, most likely the middle to upper-middle class, is feeling better about the economy.\u00a0 In fact, Wal-Mart&#8217;s bad news, ironically, is actually good news for the U.S. economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Importance grade:<\/strong> 6-7; if it turns out that shoppers continue to trade their shopping up to more expensive retailers then this likely presages an improvement in consumer confidence.\u00a0 Obviously that is a good thing, yet confirmation of that fact awaits more data.\u00a0 In my opinion, this is the first piece of good consumer news in quite awhile.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That massive retail business, Wal-Mart, has reported its same store sales in the fourth-quarter declined 1.6%.\u00a0 This compares to a fourth quarter increase in consumer-spending of 2%. Analysis: Wal-Mart has bucked the retail trend since the start of the recession and continually reported numbers that bested its rivals.\u00a0 However, because of the Company&#8217;s discount image, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}