Wal mart stores

Retailers ended a rough fiscal year with better-than-expected sales in January. According to a tally of major retailers by Thomson Reuters, comparable sales at stores open at least a year rose 3.3%. That led some companies to boost their guidance for their upcoming year-end earnings reports.

Mass layoff announcements, which became depressingly familiar last year, are back. Walmart and Sweden's Ericsson are the latest companies to cut jobs by the thousands.

Of the many ironies of last week's earthquake in Haiti, this one is the cruelest: In the months before the disaster, international officials believed the outlook for the Western Hemisphere's poorest country was starting to improve. U.S. and South Korean firms were considering expanding operations there.

Target plans to announce a $1 billion renovation program that will include a revamping its existing stores, experimenting with smaller store openings in urban areas and an expansion abroad over the next decade.

Consumers may have been shopping more this holiday, but they held down their overall spending in December and throughout all of 2009, according to government figures.

In a move that indicates consumers may be worse off than the economic pundits think, Sam's Club is closing 10 U.S. locations and cutting 1,500 jobs.

Careful shoppers and leaner store shelves will be the norm as retail recovers in 2010, and that state of affairs could last a while, according to a new study by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

The final numbers are in, and strong online sales, picky late shoppers and targeted discounting helped lift December retail sales above last year's totals -- but it won't be enough to put 2009 in the plus column. January's clearance sales won't be much help either; they will be shorter and more thinly stocked this year.

News that could affect stock prices today: Kraft's Cadbury bid gets slim support from shareholders; Google releases its Nexus One smart phone; Ford, Toyota, Honda reported improved December sales; retailers saw strong finish to the year.

Even though holiday sales got a major lift on Christmas week, it is unlikely that the 2009 holiday figures were good enough to insure that most retailers had a reasonably good year.