Impressive retail sales figures

I saw an article entitled "Federated's September sales beat expectations" and thought it was a good omen for that company (one I didn't expect), since September was the first month of the name-change of Federated stores.

If you read the article, though, and others (noted below) on other stores, Federated sales increases were poorer than almost all others major retailers -- retail generally had a great month.

Federated +6.2%
Target +6.7%
JC Penney +10.2%
Limited +12.0%
Wal-Mart +1.2%
Bon-Ton +9.1%
Nordstrom +13.0%
Saks +10.0%

Only Wal-Mart, in this grouping, did poorer than Federated. My observation (I don't have numbers to support it), is that the department store sector does reasonably well when the economy is strong, but sinks during weak economies -- and each down cycle over the past few decades has seen them sink to ever-lower levels.

So, although Federated may be looking like it's doing reasonably well at present, it needs to do better than this while the economy stays strong. (I admit to being a skeptic about department stores generally, and Federated in particular, so take my opinions with a grain of salt).

By the way, if those Wal-Mart numbers aren't an aberration, and if Wal-Mart US starts looking like Germany, Korea, Japan, and UK, then things could get ugly in Bentonville.