With two weeks left in the all-important Christmas shopping season, we checked in to see how America’s top retailers are viewed by analysts and experts as shown on TipRanks, by creating a Smart Portfolio to screen and analyze the stocks of retail brands.
TipRanks users often creating screening portfolios as part of their investment research, comparing specific stocks in a sector—Retail, for example.
We started with the Top Retailers list compiled by the National Retail Federation, the leading trade association, which tracks retail from Main Street to the internet. Ahead of the 2016 holiday season, its Stores magazine compiled a list of the 100 top retailers, most of which are publicly traded companies. Overall last year holiday sales represented nearly 20 percent of total retail industry sales, according to the trade group.
Screening this list reveals four stocks with a Strong Buy recommendation consensus among TipRanks Best Performing Analysts at this point in the holiday season. Keep in mind that for some retailers, the holiday season can represent as much as 30 percent of annual sales, with jewelry stores reporting the highest percentage, accounting for approximately 27.4 percent of their sales during the 2015 holiday season, according to the NRF.
The top-ranked retail stock is CVS Health (CVS), the integrated pharmacy health care provider, with 17 percent upside in the price from current levels, according to data compiled by TipRanks. While six top-performing analysts rate the shares a buy, Blogger Sentiment is 89 percent bullish, including Seeking Alpha blogger Eli Inkrot.
Meanwhile, there is 30 percent upside in the share price of QVC Group (QVCA) from Friday’s $27 close, according to the Best Performing Analyst Price Target calculated on TipRanks. Four analysts rate the shares as a Buy, including 5-Star Ranked UBS analyst Eric Sheridan. His performance puts him at #198 of almost 10,000 overall experts tracked by TipRanks
The other Strong Buy-rated stocks are auto parts retailer O’Reilly Auto. (ORLY) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), with upside of 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from current levels, according to data compiled by TipRanks.
Smart Portfolio users can import existing holdings from a range of online brokerages, or create portfolios on the fly, making it easy to compare stocks, view relevant news and calendar activities effecting share prices. Find out how by taking video tour of the investor tool by clicking here.
