It is time to bet on brick-and-mortar again. The next time you step around your partner's Amazon package on your way to a physical store, consider this: Rock-bottom investor expectations, attractive initial fundamentals, and ongoing…
This is the time of the year when strategists are busy sending out their annual outlooks. Here on the Global Investment Strategy team, we decided to go one step further. Rather than pontificating about what could happen in 2025, we…
US retail sales beat expectations in September, rising 0.4% from August when growth was essentially flat. The control group also beat expectations at 0.7% month-on-month, accelerating from 0.3%. Growth was however somehow weak on…
US retail sales grew 0.1% m/m in August and beat expectations of a 0.2% monthly contraction. The positive surprise seemingly spurred equity market gains on Tuesday morning. However, details do not paint as rosy a…
Neutral Home improvement retailers (HIR) were among the lucky ones that were allowed to keep their doors open during the pandemic. As a result, these big box retailers benefitted from the lockdown as people used their…
Neutral In mid-April we moved the S&P consumer discretionary sector to the overweight column via upgrading the internet and home improvement retail sub-sectors. While the home improvement retailers hit our stop earlier…
Highlights Portfolio Strategy We opt to stay patient and refrain from deploying fresh capital especially in the tech sector in the near-term; a better entry point will likely materialize between now and the end of the year. The…
Neutral In mid-April we went overweight the S&P home improvement retail (HIR) index on the back of demand-stimulating zero interest rate monetary policy, loose fiscal policy as well as rising lumber prices. As a reminder, HIR…
Overweight Our S&P home improvement retail overweight continues posting healthy gains: the position is up 23%, in relative terms, since the mid-April inception. Such handsome returns compel us to move our trailing stop…