The holiday season is filled with traveling, festivities, and gift-giving, providing a great opportunity for retailers to make up a significant amount of annual revenue. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Chanukah, and the New Year do well for these retailers from October to December. The holiday season, however, is crucial in deciding what retail companies can last through the end of the year.

With COVID-19 restrictions uplifted, more people will be celebrating with each other; greater celebration causes an increase in consumer spending. Online mega-retailers like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Apple, Home Depot, Target, and Best Buy make a significant number of sales over the holiday season. Excellent funds to invest in at the moment would be XRT, RTH, or IBUY. These funds are made up of a collection of different companies. By investing in a fund that has a collection of stocks, it decreases the volatility of the investment because the fund covers the whole industry. These companies are logical considerations and have the potential to do well for investors.

All of these companies are guaranteed to perform well over the holiday season. According to CNBC, “In 2017, consumers spent a whopping $687.87 billion during November and December on everything from apparel and jewelry to toys and books.” CNBC states that retailers like GameStop made 38% of their profits in the fourth quarter of that year. The holiday season is consequential for these companies and can be beneficial for investors. Investing in a few of these companies would be a logical consideration.

The holiday season is also synonymous with a travel season. According to SimplyFlying, almost six million people flew on the week of Christmas last year in the United States. This year, with the COVID-19 restrictions dropped, people will be traveling a lot. Airlines like American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines could make a lot of needed profits to rebound from the past 18 months.  Investing in a fund like JETS would be clever because it holds many sub-airlines. 

Also, with more people driving and flying for the holidays, oil will be sold at a higher rate. Investing in an oil fund would be logical. Funds like USO, UCO, or IEO would be good picks as they are the largest oil funds in the United States. With more people traveling, the demand for oil will rise and the funds will follow.

The holiday season is imperative for many companies, especially recovering from a difficult past 18 months. I personally recommend investing in a large fund that covers the industry as a whole over investing in individual businesses. This strategy proves to be less risky and more reliable.

*Not a financial advisor. All investment strategies and investments involve risk of loss. Nothing contained in this article should be construed as investment advice. Any reference to an investment’s past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Harriton Banner does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this article and are not responsible or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the article or for any damage or loss to be caused by and in connection to it.*