Death By Amazon’s Best Performers

Oct 24, 2019

On Monday, we updated our popular Death By Amazon index. The index is composed of retailers that we view as most vulnerable to competition from online retail like Amazon (AMZN).

Looking at year-to-date total returns of the largest five (by market cap) members of our Death By Amazon index, Target (TGT) has ran away from the rest of the group in 2019.  Including dividends, the stock has netted a 72.7% gain since the start of the year in large part due to the massive surge on earnings in the late summer.  Close competitor and the largest retailer in the index, Walmart (WMT), has given investors less than half of that as WMT has returned 30% thus far in 2019.  Before the earnings report that sent TGT skyrocketing, Costco (COST) had been a close contender for the highest returning spot. Currently, COST has the second best YTD return at 47.5% with TJX in third at 33.9%.  On the other hand, CVS has dramatically underperformed only providing a return of 3%.  Meanwhile, the namesake of the index, AMZN, actually has the second worst return in 2019 of just 18.7% YTD. Earlier this year in the spring, AMZN had actually returned the most.

Over the past year, AMZN’s return looks even worse.  Since October of last year, the stock has only returned 7.1%. While better than CVS’s 3.3% loss, each of the other largest stocks in the Death By Amazon index have offered investors more.

But over the long term, as the trend of online retail has matured, Amazon (AMZN) has offered investors a far higher return.  Total return for the stock over the past five years is 514.9%.  That is nearly three times more than the next best stock of these, Costco (COST), which has returned 158.5%.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Premium to access our Death By Amazon index as well as other B.I.G. Tips reports, interactive tools and more.