There are many strong trends emerging in the retail sector in 2006. One of the biggest trends is not a new trend, but one, which has increased dramatically since Black Friday in the 2005 Christmas gift-buying season. Gift cards in 2005 have outpaced all other years previously by some 30% and there are many reasons for this. One is because of the out-of-stock items in the 2005 Christmas season, such as personal electronic devices; most notably the new Apple iPod units like the; iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle and the incredible tiny ultra thin iPod Nano. Also the Microsoft Xbox 360 completely sold out at stores like Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, etc. This caused gift givers to buy gift cards when faced with these blockbuster Sold Out products.

Even though Christmas retail sales were less than hoped for the gift cards will slightly average out that peak season and bring more of the actual sales of those gift cards into January and February and thus strengthen first quarter retail results for these largest of box store corporations in the Retail Sector. We are also seeing another move in retail sales and that is the steady growth in e-Commerce Online Sales. Although the government tried to persuade consumers of the drastic and dire problems with online sales in October, November and December to help boost brick and mortar retail operations the consumer opted to buy online anyway. Apparently all the lobbying for the brick and mortars to coax the government into fear tactics on the consumer failed miserably, as the public relations campaign did not strike fear in the consumer. Think on this in 2006.