RoboStreet – November 29, 2019
Black Friday Brings Good Deals and Good Trades
As sure as Thanksgiving was a time of expressing gratitude and sharing time with family and friends, the following day is considered the official kickoff shopping season for Christmas. Black Friday brings all the discounts, bargains, and special “one-time” deals consumers are looking for, and it is what American consumers do best and are experts at – the art of shopping.
With the advent of shopping apps galore to work with, smart buyers can locate, check inventory availability, schedule shipping, customize lay-a-way terms, tailor gift wrapping and make the whole shopping experience much more efficient than in years past. With the job market being solid, wages on the rise and the stock market hitting new highs, the data from the holiday shopping season for 2019 should be at or near record levels.
Just to kick things off, with most stores closed for Thanksgiving, consumers didn’t wait for Black Friday to start splurging. Early data released by Adobe shows the online retail sales for Thursday hit $4.4 billion, representing an 18.7% year-over-year increase from last year’s sales total of $3.7 billion. Half of the early sales spent are on mobile devices.
“The strong online sales performance to-date suggests that holiday shopping starts much earlier than ever before,” said Jason Woosley, vice president of commerce product and platform at Adobe, in a statement. He also pointed out that online sales between Nov. 1 and Nov. 27 are up 16.1% from the year-earlier period as “steep discounts on popular items like computers on the day before Thanksgiving indicate that many of the season’s best deals are already up for grabs.”
Still, Adobe expects Black Friday sales to reach $7.5 billion this year. That would represent a gain of 20.5% from 2018. Cyber Monday sales are also forecast to grow by nearly 20% to $9.4 billion. “What will be important for retailers to track is whether the early discounts will drive continued retail growth overall, or if they have induced consumers to spend their holiday budgets earlier,” Woosley said.
Every year online sales are a bigger slice of the overall retail pie as consumers have increasingly shifted their shopping preferences from brick and mortar to buying over the net, and while Amazon.com has dominated this category, chains like Walmart, Target, Costco other specialty stores and rapidly adopted, adapted and advanced their eCommerce platforms for a consumer-friendly experience.
Third-quarter results from the “big three” Walmart, Target and Costco all showed strong year-over-year online buying trends. Target posted a +31% spike in year-over-year digital sales when the company posted better-than-forecast Q3 results, sending the stock soaring to a new all-time high of $127.97. I highlight Target because we own it in the RoboInvestor Portfolio and sold half our position last week for a profit of +17.91%.
We sold half to take advantage of the euphoria and strong short-term market conditions and kept half because my AI indicators from the Tradespoon Stock Forecast Toolbox are signaling there are more gains in store in the weeks and months ahead. In fact, a price target of $149.15 is possible as per our forecasting model. With the stock trading around $126, a move to $149 is definitely worth keeping some exposure in the stock.
When it comes to investing for directional moves within the retail space, the RoboInvestor advisory service and its AI-driven system only selects the best-of-breed stocks and ETFs to trade. Our subscribers have had great success investing in not just Target (TGT), but Walmart (WMT), Lulu Lemon Athletica (LULU), Estee Lauder (EL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Starbucks (SBUX) and Ross Stores (ROST).
I’ve got other hot retail stocks on my radar with the intention working them into our RoboInvestor Portfolio and being one of the seasonally strong sectors, the timing for adding retail stock exposure is good, but knowing which stocks and at what prices to add is the key to winning trades and investments.
During the first half of November when the market broke out to the upside, we closed seven trades, mostly half positions to capture some profits on the way up, while still remaining long half positions with the exception of KLAC and UNH. The custom algorithms afford RoboInvestors a disciplined path to profits that maximize every move in each position we place in the portfolio.
In fact, since launching RoboInvestor in April 2018, 88.46% of our picks have turned into winning trades. That’s like Christmas every day in the stock market. We scored profits on 92 trades out of 104 trades. This is how real storehouse of wealth is built, one brick at a time, day after day, month after month, year after year.
Make the investing dream come true for your portfolio. Put RoboInvestor at the top of your holiday shopping list and give yourself or someone you love or care for the gift of sound investing and wealth creation. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving and follows the centuries-old adage “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
Having the power of AI and RoboInvestor to guide the way to market profits, it’s more like shooting fish out of a barrel. And anytime the business of investing can be made easier and highly consistent, then that system is in itself a fantastic investment. Join me today and become a RoboInvestor and let’s not only pay for the holiday season from our next round of trades but build the retirement nest egg of your dreams.
And remember we’re not talking about day-trading here. I’m looking for 50-100% gains inside of the next 3 months, so my weekly updates are timely enough for you to act.
*Please note: RoboStreet is part of your free subscription service. It is not included in any paid Tradespoon subscription service. Vlad Karpel only trades his own personal money in paid subscription services. If you are a paid subscriber, please review your Premium Member Picks, ActiveTrader, MonthlyTrader, or RoboInvestor recommendations. If you are interested in receiving Vlad’s personal picks, please click here.
Comments Off on
Tradespoon Tools make finding winning trades in minute as easy as 1-2-3.
Our simple 3 step approach has resulted in an average return of almost 20% per trade!