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By Staff Reporters

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Shopping data reveals that Q4 isn’t as important as one might expect. For example, the holiday quarter in 2022 accounted for 26.8% of the year’s sales, just a hair over the 25% mark if sales were evenly spread across the year, per the US Census Bureau. Of course, some types of retailers depend on the holiday quarter far more than others. Discretionary retailers (which sell the things you want, but don’t need…aka gifts) rely on Q4 for up to 40% of their yearly sales, according to McKinsey. For department stores, clothing stores, and toy stores, the holiday season really is make-or-break. GameStop, for instance, recorded 37% of its annual revenue last year in the last three months of 2022.

But for other retailers, Q4 isn’t such a big deal. People apparently read throughout the year because book stores only depend on the fourth quarter for 27.4% of sales. People also need to eat food all year long: Q4 accounted for 26.3% of sales for grocery stores.

Meanwhile, gas stations, car dealerships, and building material companies perform worse in the holiday quarter than at other times of the year.

Here is where the major benchmarks ended:

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource

The S&P 500 Index was 2.72 up points (0.1%) at 4,559.34, up 1% for the week; the Dow Jones Industrial Average^®(DJI) was up 117.12 points (0.3%) at 35,390.15, up 1.3% for the week; the NASDAQ Composite was down 15.00 points (0.1%) at 14,250.85, up 0.9% for the week.

• The 10-year Treasury note yield (TNX) was up about 5 basis points at 4.47%.
• CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) was down 0.34 at 12.46.

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Filed under: "Ask-an-Advisor", Alternative Investments, Financial Planning, Funding Basics, Glossary Terms, Health Economics, Healthcare Finance, Investing, Touring with Marcinko | Tagged: CBOE, economics, holiday economics, holiday spending, inflation, Marcinko, markets, NASDAQ, Russell Index 2000, RUT, S&P 500, stock markets |