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Online Retail: Amazon Trouble a Signal of Trouble for Other Online Retailers?

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Bad news for online retailers: Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN  ) stock dropped Thursday morning after Goldman Sachs said the online retailer may miss analysts' fourth-quarter sales estimates, reports Bloomberg.

According to a note from Goldman, the company's sales may grow 38% from last year to $17.9 billion. That figure misses analysts expectations of $18.2 billion.

E-commerce
Because Amazon in the U.S.'s largest online retailer, and usually outpaces holiday e-commerce spending growth, a dip in sales may serve as an indicator for the online retail market as a whole.

Bloomberg reports data from ComScore.com, which showed Amazon has historically outpaced other online retailers by 23%.

In addition to a variety of products available on Amazon's site, Amazon also sells its Kindle line. The retailer said it sold "well over" 1 million kindles per week in December, with demand led by its Kindle Fire tablet (via Bloomberg). If Amazon is still losing out, given its additional revenues from Kindles, other e-commerce retailers may be in trouble.

Business section: Investing ideas
So, how could this trend affect other online retailers?

To find out we created a list of popular online retailer trading on the U.S. market exchanges.

Do you think these names will take a hit? (Click here to access free, interactive tools to analyze these ideas.)

1. Amazon.com: Operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. Market cap of $79.08B. The stock is currently stuck in a downtrend, trading -6.62% below its SMA20, -14.08% below its SMA50, and -14.01% below its SMA200. The stock has performed poorly over the last month, losing 10.44%.

2. E-Commerce China Dangdang (Nasdaq: DANG  ) : Operates as a business-to-consumer e-commerce company in the People's Republic of China. Market cap of $340.07M. The stock is currently stuck in a downtrend, trading -7.72% below its SMA20, -18.4% below its SMA50, and -62.99% below its SMA200. It's been a rough couple of days for the stock, losing 5.51% over the last week.

3. eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY  ) : Provides online marketplaces for the sale of goods and services, as well as other online commerce, platforms, and online payment solutions to individuals and businesses in the United States and internationally. Market cap of $39.26B. The stock has gained 7.23% over the last year.

4. IAC/InterActiveCorp. (Nasdaq: IACI  ) : Engages in the Internet business in the United States and internationally. Market cap of $3.49B. Relatively low correlation to the market (beta = 0.61), which may be appealing to risk averse investors. The stock has gained 42.03% over the last year.

5. Overstock.com (Nasdaq: OSTK  ) : Operates as an online retailer offering discount brand, non-brand, and closeout merchandise in the United States. Market cap of $180.89M.  The stock is a short squeeze candidate, with a short float at 10.71% (equivalent to 18.87 days of average volume). The stock has lost 53.61% over the last year.

Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the stocks mentioned above. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.


List compiled by Eben Esterhuizen, CFA. Kapitall's Eben Esterhuizen does not own any of the shares mentioned above. Rebecca owns shares of AMZN. Short data sourced from Yahoo! Finance.

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Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On December 30, 2011, at 4:36 PM, George513 wrote:

    As far as ebay and making/saving $ goes, forget the stock and use the site.

    Use a site like Ebuyersedge.com to set up saved searches. You get an e-mail whenever a matching item is newly listed. Especially good for "Buy It Now"s that are priced right.

    Try a misspelling search using a site like Typojoe.com to hopefully find some great deals with items that have main key words misspelled in the title. Other interested buyers might not ever see them.

    If you see an auction that you want to bid on, use a sniping service such as Bidball.com to place your bid for you. It'll bid in the last few seconds, helping you to save money and avoid shill bidding.

  • Report this Comment On January 02, 2012, at 12:20 AM, wmumart wrote:

    AMZN is in fee fall. It came down from 246 to 167 in just 12 weeks. This is a total disaster.

    How can anyone predict rebound when there is no good news at all.

    Bad earnings, misguided vision, and total lack of safety plan in case of situation like this.

    Bezos did failed big time and he knows it, I am wonder when rest of fools will catch with the news.

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Related Tickers

5/25/2012 4:00 PM
AMZN $212.89 Down -2.35 -1.09%
Amazon.com CAPS Rating: ***
OSTK $6.70 Down -0.03 -0.45%
Overstock.com CAPS Rating: *
IACI $44.73 Down -0.08 -0.18%
IAC/InterActiveCor… CAPS Rating: ***
EBAY $40.35 Up +0.68 +1.71%
eBay CAPS Rating: ****

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