NEW YORK—As the most important shopping period of the year approaches, some investors are betting shares of beaten-down consumer stocks will benefit if inflation keeps falling and retail sales stay strong.
Consumer discretionary stocks, a group whose members run the gamut from Amazon.com Inc. and automaker Tesla Inc. to retailer Target Corp., have been walloped by surging prices, with the S&P 500’s consumer discretionary sector falling nearly 33 percent for the year to date compared with a nearly 17 percent fall for the broader index.
