Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Best Buy, JC Penney and the Retail Jumble

A mix of disappointing earnings (See Best Buy, J.C. Penney and Sears) along with pockets of luxury strength plus strongly trending auto sales has created a jumble.

January 17, 2014 at 3:28 PM UTC

By Barry Ritholtz

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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It has been a confusing few weeks for followers of the retail sector. A mix of disappointing earnings (See Best Buy, J.C. Penney and Sears) along with pockets of luxury strength plus strongly trending auto sales has created a jumble. Let's see if we can make some sense of the entire mess.

Let's start with the tales of the American consumer's demise. The early read from the National Retail Federation (You remember them) was for retail sales to drop 2.7 percent on Black Friday, and for gloomy holiday sales. Well, they reported this week that holiday sales rose 4.6 percent year-over-year (with the caveat that I have no clue what their methodology actually is). A nearly 5 percent increase is not exactly a gloomy sales season. This is consistent with Morgan Housel's claim that everything is doing much better than a few years ago and no one is happy about.