The Retail Meltdown Is Not Just Amazon's Fault
Retail stocks have been annihilated recently, even though the economy is eking out growth. The fundamentals of the retail business look horrible: Sales are stagnating, and profitability is getting worse with every passing quarter.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon get most of the credit, but this credit is misplaced. Today, online sales represent only 8.5% of total retail sales. Amazon, at $80 billion in sales, accounts only for 1.5% of total U.S. retail sales, which at the end of 2016 were around $5.5 trillion. Though it's human nature to look for the simplest explanation, in truth, the confluence of a half-dozen unrelated developments is responsible for weak retail sales.
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Source: Fool.com