SPDR S&P Retail (NYSEArca: XRT) rallied more than 2% on Tuesday as the sector ETF saw its heaviest trading volume since May 2012 on better-than-expected retail sales.
Over 14 million XRT shares traded Tuesday, compared with a daily average of about 4.3 million over the past three months.
“U.S. retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in December and sales for November and October were revised slightly higher, according to Commerce Department data … The increase was the highest since September,” MarketWatch reported.
“The report suggests that consumers provided an element of support to the economy during December. We should get respectable results on total consumer spending for the fourth quarter of the year,” said Michael Moran, economist at Daiwa Securities America, in a Reuters article.