Two emerging threads from retail earnings

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Earnings from retailers like Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), TJX (TJX), and Macy's (M), along with jobs and retail data are painting a very mixed picture of the US consumer.

LSEG Director of Consumer Research Jharonne Martis joins Wealth! to give insight into the US retail numbers and recent retail earnings say about the consumer and what trends investors can expect from consumers.

"There are two common denominators right now that are jumping out. The first one being that as you mentioned, retailers are all about the omnichannel strategy. And this is what's important in order to attract the consumers to the stores. Home Depot (HD), Walmart, Lowe's (LOW) yesterday all told us, and even Target today they smashed their e-commerce estimate with a robust 8.3% growth in e-commerce. Consumers are are ordering things on their mobile phones and then wanting to pick them up in store on their way from work to home. And so this is really what's driving sales," says Martis

Martis points out how consumers are really focused on value, "they are shopping at the discounters, off-price retailers." She adds "The trend this year has been like you saw July retail sales... really smashing expectations. And that was because the average promotional rate and the amount of merchandise on sale really spiked to the highest level it did all year round. So we're going to continue to see things like this around Labor Day weekend, already people are shopping for Halloween."

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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

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