Are Retail Stocks at an Inflection Point?

Amazon-Mania has taken over the stock market. Every mention or speculation that Amazon is going to enter a sector of the retail market drives the share prices of every company in that market lower.

Can Amazon really do it all?

That seems to be what many investors are assuming, but what the crowd knows is usually baked into share prices. Here, MarketWatch asks if the ultra-bearish sentiment toward brick and mortar retail has reached an inflection point?

“After a two-year, ~24% bear market in the SPDR S&P Retail ETF XRT, -0.57%  , someone is finally creating a way to get short the brick-and-mortar retail stocks via a levered ETF. Could this be a sign of capitulation for the sector? Perhaps,” said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at MKM Partners, in a note dated Sunday that offered the chart below….

From a contrarian perspective, the news about the ETFs has “some of the ‘Magazine Cover’ syndrome” built into it, said Brean Capital’s Peter Tchir, according to a Barron’s report. However, the Brean managing director added that he is “not going to try and call a bottom in brick-and-mortar retail, or peak Amazon.”

Read more here.