Holiday e-Commerce Spending Rose 16% in FY12 on Late Dec. Surge (AMZN) (EBAY)
Harkening back to school days of yore, consumers delayed holiday shopping until the last minute. Because, well, old habits are hard to break.
Data from comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR) confirms this. According to the firm, U.S. holiday e-commerce shopping the last business week before Christmas rose 53 percent led by a 76 percent boost on December 17th...better known as "Free Shipping Day." Sales last week were a robust $3.686 billion, or about 99.3 percent less than the $605 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts coming when the fiscal cliff finally hits.
comScore noted that, "for the holiday season-to-date $38.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 16-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year."
e-Commerce spending for November and December improved 16 percent to $38.69 billion, slightly below comScore's original projection of 17 percent.
Traders will be keeping an eye on the likes of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), Wal-mart (NYSE: WMT), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), PC Mall (Nasdaq: MALL), Overstock.com (Nasdaq: OSTK), and others as more data comes in and investors sentiment is raised. Shares of Amazon are indicated higher Monday, while the others are largely mixed.