Retailers are having their best holiday season in six years, which helped to boost the Direxion Daily Retail Bull 3X ETF (NYSEArca: RETL), which gained over 17 percent on Wednesday.
U.S. sales from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve have risen by 5.1 percent to over $850 billion based on the latest numbers from Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online stores. Online sales were also up 19.1 percent versus a year ago.
“From shopping aisles to online carts, consumer confidence translated into holiday cheer for retail,” Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard, said in a statement. “By combining the right inventory with the right mix of online versus in-store, many retailers were able to give consumers what they wanted via the right shopping channels.”
The latest data coincides with online sales reaching $110.6 billion five days prior to Christmas, which represented an 18 percent bounce from a year ago. Adobe Analytics is predicting that online holiday sales should reach the $126 billion mark.
RETL seeks daily investment results equal to 300% of the daily performance of the S&P Retail Select Industry Index. The index is a modified equal-weighted index that is designed to measure performance of the stocks comprising the S&P Total Market Index that are classified in the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) retail sub-industry.
