The retail sector rose Friday led the rise in stock prices of Sears Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: SHLD) and BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. (NYSE: BJ). Shares of Sears Holdings rose 3.83 percent to $74.10, after the company said today that it let go of 700 employees in its appliance department at 225 Kmart stores, and also Sear’s Kmart has set up a new point-of-sales software system that would allow customers to check out appliances at any register instead of having to use a dedicated register in the appliance department. On the other hand, shares of BJ’s Wholesale jumped more than 3 percent, after private-equity firms Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners on Thursday made a joint proposal to buy the membership warehouse-club chain for undisclosed terms, Leonard Green said in a regulatory filing. Among other gainers in the sector are, Costco Wholesale Corp. (Nasdaq: COST) gaining 1.41 percent to $79.96, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) up 0.41 percent to $46.64, Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE: LOW), up 0.35 percent to $22.76, and Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) adding 1.19 percent to $27.20. Among the ETF’s, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (NYSEArca: XRT) was trading higher by 1.10 percent to $50.63 and PowerShares Dynamic Retail ETF (NYSE: PMR) was also trading higher by 1.45 percent to $20.32 today.
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