UPDATE: Target raises holiday sales forecast on robust apparel demand

Reaping the benefits of colder holiday season weather

My first post on my (still) nascent yet growing substack was about Target’s horrible Q3 earnings miss, which caused its stock price to plummet 22%.

I published that, somewhat ironically, on November 22d.

I was more bullish than Target seemed to be about its holiday season forecast based on my expectation of much colder weather, Target’s large seasonal apparel assortment, and the geography of its stores.

Here’s a link to a snippet from my newsletter dispatch:

The silver lining on Target's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

While the warm weather was a headwind for Target in Q3, the polarity is changing for Q4 (November - January), particularly the all-important holiday shopping season.

Last year saw the warmest December shopping season on record, which means that even a simple reversion to the mean (what I refer to as the rhythm method of weather forecasting) points to an incredibl…