Retail’s Roller-coaster Week on Wall Street

Retail has a tough crowd to please on Wall Street these days. Investors are more ready than ever to jump ship and sell at any sign of weakness. And while volatility has seemed to become one of the only stock market constants in recent years, the extreme declines over the past month have sharpened the focus on retail and fashion — and not in a good way. Despite the ultra-low U.S. unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, consumers aren’t investing in fashion — and investors are taking that seriously. The weakness has been attributed to everything from changing shopping habits to uncertainty over Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war, which threatens to slap an additional 25 percent levy on apparel and footwear made in China. Those duties would come on top of existing tariffs for apparel and footwear, which averaged 13.1 percent last year, according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association. “It’s making investors not want to buy these [retail] stocks ahead of what could be a negative event, if [across the board] tariffs in fact become a reality,” said Jay Sole, retail analyst at UBS. “Retail would be one of those sectors where the market is showing the most amount of

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