In an earlier post looking at breadth among the different industry groups in the S&P 500, we noted that Retailing was the top performing group in the S&P 500 YTD with a gain of over 15%. Looking at the table below, however, you would have hardly guessed by looking at the performance of brick and mortar retailers in the S&P 500 on a YTD basis. Of the 25 individual brick and mortar companies listed, just nine are up YTD, and the average YTD performance of these stocks has been a decline of 0.77%. To be sure, there have been some winners with stocks like Kohl’s (KSS) and Macy’s (M) up over 20% and a total of five stocks up more than 10%. At the other end of the list, though, there are also five stocks down by double-digit percentages.

The table below shows the YTD returns of all the stocks in the S&P 500 Retailing Industry Group. That includes all the names highlighted above plus the four non-traditional brick and mortar retailers in the group (highlighted in green). As shown, all four of the stocks not listed in the table above have seen stellar returns so far in 2018, with Netflix’s (NFLX) 67% gain leading the way higher. Right behind NFLX, Amazon (AMZN) has rallied over 30%, while Booking (BKNG) and Trip Advisor (TRIP) round out the top five. In this table, we have also included a column showing what each company’s market cap equals as a percentage of the industry group’s total market cap. By itself, AMZN accounts for almost 45% of the industry group, while NFLX accounts for another 8.4%. BKNG is no slouch either at 6.1% of the industry group’s total market cap. What’s really amazing about these four stocks is that together they account for just under 60% of the industry group’s total market cap, yet when you think retail, for most people they aren’t the first companies that typically come to mind.