FSTA News and Press, Fidelity MSCI COnsumer Staples Index From 04/15/21

Month-over-month nominal sales in March increased by 9.8%. Real Retail Sales increased by 9.2% and is at its all-time high. This indicator is a splicing of the discontinued retail sales series with the Retail and Food Services Sales and deflated by the seasonally adjusted Consumer...

For cord-cutters, the shift away from cable TV was more than just a shift away from "cable" or "satellite" - it was a break from a provider with a proprietary piece of hardware that consumers had to install and pay for to access programming. Retail's Digital Shifters are in the proces...

All of the recent positive economic news caused the IMF to raise its 2021 U.S. GDP forecast by a giant step to 6.4% (from 5.1% previously estimated). That would represent the strongest annual economic growth rate since 1984. The one warning flag is inflation. Producer Price Index rose...

The economic restart has lifted commodity prices. Beyond that, we see structural trends leading to a divergence of fortunes in different commodities. The International Monetary Fund has raised its global growth forecast to 6% in 2021. U.S. stocks hit record highs and yields traded bel...

As economies emerge from pandemic restrictions, consumers are shifting spending from goods to more travel and dining out. While there are reasons for optimism, a long-term economic boom is still very much a question. Blu Putnam and Erik Norland discuss the prospects for a 2020s ec...

Global stocks rose in the first quarter, but volatile trading patterns reminded investors that the road to normal will be bumpy. Solid market gains masked rapidly changing market conditions. Perhaps the biggest overriding risk that surfaced in early 2021 is the power of a sentimen...

On March 25, the Archegos Hedge Fund asked firms handling its capital swaps to develop a strategy to liquidate its holdings, which is why many Chinese ADRs and media stocks sold off violently. The Archegos Hedge Fund fiasco is due largely to the fact that many big Wall Street firms di...

The expected 21Q1 earnings growth rate is currently 24.2%, which has increased from 16.0% at the beginning of the year. All but two sectors have seen positive revisions to 21Q1 growth expectations since the beginning of the year. In 2021, we expect to see a year of high expectatio...

Demand for the latest fashion trends is always strong in the weeks leading up to Easter, a time when retailers are still selling the season's must-have Spring items at full price. The current average promotional discount for online stores is 34.2% and has dropped below the 2020 pandem...

Consumer confidence has yet to reach the higher pre-pandemic level, but it is moving up from its low after not declining as much as it did during the financial crisis. Two big ticket purchases for the consumer are a home and an automobile. As is the case with housing, auto invento...