Consumer Retail Stocks: What the 2026 Filings Show

What counts as a retail stock

The sector is the set of publicly traded companies whose revenue comes from selling merchandise to consumers. Grocers, warehouse clubs, mass merchants, department stores, apparel chains, home improvement chains, specialty sellers, and the e-commerce operations bolted onto all of them.

It splits roughly in two. On one side sit the staples-heavy retailers, where food and household basics fill the basket and the customer shows up whether or not the year is going well. On the other sit the discretionary retailers, where the customer can simply not buy anything this quarter and feel fine about it.

The two halves respond to different inputs. A grocery-weighted retailer tracks food prices and store traffic. A discretionary retailer tracks how willing households are to spend on purchases that can wait. Index providers file the first group under consumer staples and the second under consumer discretionary, which is why a screen built off a single sector label misses half the industry. You can see how investors group the names themselves on the MarketPlays tag index.

The demand backdrop, as of June 2026

U.S. advance retail sales (retail trade and food services, seasonally adjusted) came in at $768.6 billion for June 2026, against $720.2 billion in June 2025, per the FRED series RSAFS. That works out to about 6.7% growth, calculated from those two published observations rather than quoted from a release.

One caveat comes from the note attached to the series: the most recent month is an advance estimate based on data from a subsample of firms from the larger Monthly Retail Trade Survey. It gets revised. Treat June as a first read rather than a settled number.

The monthly path is the more useful part. After a January dip to $734.5 billion, the series rose every month through June: $741.3B in February, $754.0B in March, $759.1B in April, $766.9B in May, and $768.6B in June (FRED RSAFS). The gains shrank at the end of that run. May added about $7.8 billion over April. June added about $1.7 billion over May.

What the two largest filings actually say

RSAFS is an industry-wide aggregate covering every retail trade and food service establishment the Census Bureau surveys, so it says nothing about any single company. Revenue for a specific retailer has to come out of that retailer's own filing. The two largest here are Walmart's FY26 earnings release, covering the year ended January 31, 2026, and Costco's Q3 FY26 8-K exhibit, covering the 12 weeks ended May 10, 2026.

Walmart's fiscal 2026 (the year ended January 31, 2026) produced $713.2 billion in total revenue against $681.0 billion, up 4.7%. The fourth quarter carried $190.7 billion of that, up 5.6%, or 4.9% in constant currency. Global eCommerce sales grew 24% in the quarter, led by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery plus the marketplace. U.S. comparable sales excluding fuel rose 4.6%.

The profit mix is where it gets interesting. FY26 gross margin rate was 24.2% against 24.1%, and operating income was $29,825 million against $29,348 million. Walmart Connect, the U.S. advertising business, grew 41% in the fourth quarter, and membership fee revenue rose 15.1% globally (Walmart FY26 earnings release). A retailer growing advertising at 41% is running two businesses under one roof, and only one of them carries retail margins.

Costco's third quarter of fiscal 2026 (the 12 weeks ended May 10, 2026) brought net sales of $69.15 billion, up 11.6% from $61.96 billion. The first 36 weeks came to $203.37 billion, up 9.6%. Net income was $2.19 billion, or $4.93 per diluted share, against $1.90 billion and $4.28 a year earlier, across 931 warehouses, 639 of them in the U.S. and Puerto Rico (Costco Q3 FY26 8-K exhibit).

On February 19, 2026, Walmart guided fiscal 2027 to net sales growth of 3.5% to 4.5% in constant currency, adjusted operating income growth of 6.0% to 8.0% in constant currency, and adjusted earnings per share of $2.75 to $2.85, alongside a new $30 billion share repurchase authorization. That range is management's estimate as of that date, not a result.

Headline comps versus adjusted comps

Retailers that sell fuel report a comp number that moves with the price of gasoline, and gasoline has been the loudest line in the price data this cycle. In June 2026 the gasoline index (all types) fell 9.7% for the month but was still up 26.7% over 12 months. The broader energy index fell 5.7% for the month and was up 15.7% year over year (BLS Consumer Price Index news release).

That is why Costco publishes both versions. Investors comparing retailers usually pull the adjusted line, since a club retailer with fuel pumps and an apparel chain without them are otherwise being scored on different tests. Ranked lists of retail names built on headline comp growth tend to skip that distinction.

The inflation mix hits the two halves differently

"The all items index rose 3.5 percent for the 12 months ending June after rising 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending May."

Headline CPI fell 0.4% in June 2026, the largest one-month decrease since April 2020. Underneath that, food at home rose 2.7% over 12 months and 0.2% for the month, the full food index rose 3.0%, and core CPI (all items less food and energy) rose 2.6%. The apparel index decreased over the month (BLS CPI release).

Read against the sector split, those lines point in opposite directions. Grocery-weighted retailers get less revenue lift from price at 2.7% food-at-home inflation than they did at higher rates, which puts more of the burden on units and traffic. Discretionary retailers facing a falling apparel index have a harder time passing costs through, and promotional pressure shows up in gross margin before it shows up in sales.

How investors sort the names

Investors considering retailers usually run a short list of checks before comparing any two companies, mostly to make the numbers commensurable.

• Strip fuel and currency out of comparable sales before ranking anything.
• Separate traffic from ticket. A comp built on more visits reads differently from one built on higher prices.
• Note where the profit growth comes from. Walmart Connect advertising grew 41% in Q4 FY26 and membership fee revenue grew 15.1% globally, which is not the same engine as merchandise margin.
• Match the fiscal calendar. Walmart's FY2026 ended January 31, 2026, so "FY26" and "2026" cover different windows.

An illustrative example, built only from the figures cited above and not a recommendation: suppose an investor lines up Costco's 11.6% Q3 net sales growth against Walmart's 4.7% full-year growth and concludes the first is growing more than twice as fast. Those are different period lengths, one a quarter and one a fiscal year, and the Costco comp inside that quarter drops from 9.8% to 6.6% once gasoline and currency come out. The gap is real and smaller than the raw comparison suggests. Per-name data and community research sit on the MarketPlays symbol pages for WMT and COST.

Key takeaways

• "Retail stocks" means shares of retailers. The retail-investor sense of the word is a separate subject.
• U.S. advance retail sales were $768.6 billion in June 2026 against $720.2 billion a year earlier, about 6.7% growth (FRED RSAFS), and the June figure is an advance estimate subject to revision.
• Walmart's FY26 revenue was $713.2 billion, up 4.7%, with Q4 eCommerce up 24% and U.S. advertising up 41% (Walmart FY26 earnings release).
• Costco's Q3 FY26 net sales rose 11.6% to $69.15 billion, but total company comps were 6.6% after adjusting for gasoline and foreign exchange, against 9.8% headline (Costco Q3 FY26 8-K).
• June 2026 CPI showed food at home up 2.7% year over year and the apparel index down for the month, a different setup for a grocer than for a clothing chain (BLS CPI release).

For a working list of sector names to track alongside these filings, start on MarketPlays Explore. Open a MarketPlays account and set up your own hub portfolio in under two minutes.

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