Goldman Sachs On American Retailers

Goldman Sachs has published a research report on America's Retail stores in anticipation of the forthcoming holiday season.

In the report, Goldman Sachs writes "Week 4 of our Consumer Electronics Count exhibited more of the same as Amazon stood 11.6% below the average. Third-party sellers are helping Amazon, as half of items were sold through lower-priced third parties. Sequentially, prices fell for the third straight week, but the pace of price cuts moderated to 1.5% from over 2%. Amazon, Kmart and Target all lowered prices by over 2%, while Wal-Mart, Costco, and Best Buy prices were relatively unchanged. Last year, Target lowered after week 4 and Kmart raised, while the others remained stable. Retailers held a similar positioning after week 4 in 2009, with the exception being Kmart's price variance which was nearly twice as high last year."

Companies related to this report include:

Walmart (NYSE: WMT) $54.39
Costco (NASDAQ: COST) $66.56
Target (NYSE: TGT) $56.31
KMart Corporation
Best Buy (NYSE: BBY)
Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) $164.82