Thoughts for Memorial Day

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." ~ George S. Patton

“The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

"The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it." ~ Tom Clancy

High Prices in Retail

Yesterday was a rare good day for retail stocks, as strong first-quarter results from retailers such as Best Buy and PVH led indexes to record highs. Best Buy soared 21.5 percent to $61.25 after the electronics retailer issued a strong first-quarter report, including better sales of mobile devices and gaming products.

PVH, the owner of brands including Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, climbed 4.8 percent to $107 after it raised its annual forecasts in the wake of its own strong report. Other retailers — including Guess, Abercrombie & Fitch and Burlington Stores — also made substantial gains.

There was good news for the biggest online retailer as well. Amazon rose 1.3 percent on the day,  peaking at a tantalizing $999 per share before falling back to $993.

Skipping Vacation

Are you going on vacation this summer? Are you taking all the time your employer gives you? The average U.S. employee who receives paid vacation has only taken a little over half, or 54 percent, of those days in the past 12 months, a new survey of over 2,200 workers by careers website Glassdoor has found.

This is up slightly from how much vacation time employees reported taking in 2014, when Glassdoor first conducted this survey; it was 51 percent then. If an average worker who receives two weeks vacation leaves five days on the table, they’re effectively giving hundreds of dollars back to the company.

Why don’t they take what’s due? They fear getting behind on their work (cited by 34 percent), they believe no one else at their company can do the work while they’re out (30 percent), they are completely dedicated to their company (22 percent), and they feel they can never be disconnected (21 percent).

A Slow Summer Gas Season

If you’re planning to kick off your summer with a Memorial Day road trip, you couldn’t have picked a better year to do so. Gas prices going into the holiday, considered the unofficial start to the summer driving season, are well below where they typically are at this time of year, according to data firm Bespoke Investment Group.

A gallon of gas costs an average of $2.36 per gallon in the U.S. right now, 22 percent below the $3.04 average going back to 2005. It has only been cheaper to fill the tank in two other years since then: 2016, when prices were at $2.29 a gallon, and 2005, when they were at $2.12.

And this is the time of year, as we enter the summer, when prices are normally the strongest. On average, prices are up 22 percent between the start of the year and May 23, but thus far in 2017, prices are up a mere 1.1 percent, the lowest year-to-date increase in Bespoke’s data set by far.

Earnings Season Roundup

First quarter earnings season is now in the books. A total of 2,450 companies reported earnings, and of these, exactly 1,500 of them reported better than expected EPS numbers. That’s a 61.2 percent earnings beat rate.

Those stocks, not surprisingly, tended to rise in value after their reporting dates. On average, the stocks that beat their earnings estimates this season gained 1.97 percent on their earnings reaction days.

Since 61.2 percent of companies beat EPS estimates, that means 29.8 percent of them missed their estimates. These stocks averaged a one-day decline of 3.21 percent on their earnings reaction days. In other words, for those that missed, the drop was worse than the gain was for those that exceeded estimates.

History Lesson

The S&P 500 is off to its best start in four years, but that doesn’t mean it will end that way. Through May 18, the S&P 500 has gained 5.7 percent. In the past decade, two other years have better returns over the same time period, as Bespoke Investment Group noted in research published Friday.

In 2013, the S&P had jumped 17 percent by this time of year, and went on to finish the year up nearly 30 percent. In 2011, the S&P 500 had returned 6.6 percent by May 18, but would to take a tumble in August and would finish the year basically flat.

Bespoke also looked at the 10 years that correlated the most with the start of 2017. During those years, the S&P 500 averaged a gain of 4.7 percent from May 18 through end of the year, with returns positive in seven of the 10 years. But one of those years was 1987, when the stock market took a 14  percent tumble between May 18 and year-end.

Spinoffs Lose Their Luster

Companies are finding it more difficult to extract value by spinning off businesses, according to a new analysis from Citi’s investment banking group. The study examined returns for the parent company from announcement to deal completion and returns for the spinoff two years after the transaction closed. Spinoffs underperformed their industry sectors by 5 percent on average between 2011 and 2015.

They used to do much better than that. The underperformance of 5 percent in recent years compares with an average overperformance of 30 percent between 2001 and 2005, and 19 percent between 2006 and 2010.

Despite the negative trend, spinoffs remain popular. Companies completed $121.5 billion such deals globally, according to Dealogic. For the year as of May 17, companies have announced $34.9 billion in spin-offs, 27 percent ahead of last year’s pace.