Genuine Value in Retail

The Amazon-eats-the-world thesis have reared its head again in recent weeks, with carnage in retail icons like JCP JWN M, among others.

To reiterate our counter to that thesis, while it is certainly true that Amazon is inflicting, shall we say, creative destruction on plenty of old hat retail plays, it is not true on every level.

In other words, we want to play close attention to which retail plays the market deems obvious to Jeff Bezos and Amazon's ambitious moves.

Looking at some of the top holdings in the XRT, retail sector ETF, FIVE OLLI and Wayfair (below on the daily chart) all stand out as winners among a sea of the bludgeoned "Bezos' Pendejos."

Wayfair is rather heavily-shorted and is prone to a violent squeeze higher if shorts are truly trapped here. And it sure seems that way as price bases high and tight in a clear uptrend, unperturbed by the sharp selling in other parts of the retail space.