Another Mega Storm Threatens Holiday Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 6, 6:26AM EST

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Many holiday season analysts point to the skies to determine how well retail sales may do. Their logic is that very bad weather will keep people out of malls and shopping centers. Many of these people will go online to places like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to buy holiday gifts. If the bad weather reaches most of the country and lasts long enough, pessimistic observations about brick-and-mortar store results may turn deafening. And there is actually a big storm that has overwhelmed much of the country during the past several days.

CNN described the weather across much of the nation as “massive winter storm.” The news company reported awful conditions from Dallas to the Ozarks to Tennessee. A blast of Arctic air has frozen nearly every state other than Florida.

It is difficult to find hard evidence that people do not shop in bad weather. Hurricanes and blizzards aside, most people who need to buy things probably do. Alternatively, people who cannot shop one day, shop the next, or the next. No one is going to let a little cold keep them from getting gifts for their children.

The “Amazon wins” theory about bad weather is also impossible to prove, unless Amazon gets a surge of unexpected sales that last for the period of the Arctic freeze. The people who want to shop at Amazon already go there, even if the weather is good. Amazon claims its sales will rise by double digits from the final quarter of 2012, and they could move up by 25%. It made that forecast months ago. Amazon expected brand new customers then. And it will get them. However, that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) loses in the process is unlikely. “Everyday low prices” are too much of an enticement.

Analysts may downgrade some retail stocks because of the weather. A number of these companies have already suffered from negative sentiment on Wall Street because of poor November sales. But weak sales in November may mean people have held off shopping until December. The bad weather across the country probably will not last all month. Another mega storm currently threatens holiday sales? Not likely.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.