Retail earnings also pressured the consumer discretionary sector, notably Nordstrom, which reported an unexpected fall in same-store sales, and J.C. Penney, which also revealed a first-quarter loss.
”Looking at traditional brick and mortar sales, it’s pretty clear [retailers]are losing to online juggernauts,” Jimmy Chang, chief investment strategist at Rockefeller & Co, told the WSJ.
Despite the stumble with the recent retailer results, first quarter corporate earnings have been overall supportive of the higher valuations in U.S. markets as companies are on track for the fastest growth in earnings per share since 2011.
“The first-quarter earnings seasons is one of the best overall we’ve seen in the past decade,” Olivier Marciot, investment manager at Unigestion, told the WSJ. “Consumption has been kind of weak in the last couple of months…but we are not worried at all for the moment about the U.S. consumer.”
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