The online e-commerce business is booming this year. The total value of goods bought online is up 19% for the period from November 1 through December 11 to $20.49 billion. This past Monday total sales hit $880 million for the day, up 33% over last year.
The head of online research firm comScore said online holiday spending was on track to hit the firm’s $29.5 billion forecast.
That is one side of the story. The other is presented by Bloomberg: "Online sales in November and December may rise 20 percent, a record low for the industry, and slower than the 26 percent pace of a year earlier." In other words it is nice that online spending is up, but it has slowed enough to create real concern.
With two sides to the debate, it would be good to have a proxy. The largest e-commerce website is Amazon (AMZN). It had 57.6 million unique visitors in October. That makes it almost twice the size of Wal-Mart.com (WMT).
Over the last month, Amazon shares are up 17%. The Nasdaq is flat for that period. Wal-Mart’s shares up up about 5% which probably reflects concerns about store traffic for the holiday season. Rival Target (TGT) is down 7% for the period.
But, if e-commerce is sick, Amazon shareholders are fools.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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