HOW TO PLAY It

there is an old saying on Wall street: “don’t fight the tape.” and in retailing, the tape clearly favors balsam’s frenemy Amazon, which has provided lucky stockholders a 30% average annual total return since 2002. another option would be to buy Amplify Online Retail ETF, which is stuffed with the likes of stamps.com, etsy, overstock.com and 36 other e-tailers. for those who really want to step on brick-and-mortar’s throat, invest in ProShares Decline of the Retail Store ETF, which provides short exposure (daily return times minus one) to an index of 56 traditional retail stocks.