CHRIS VERSACE: Good morning, Action Alerts Plus members. It's Tuesday, December 27, and we are in the last week of 2022. We're starting off with stocks trading in the red today following the holiday weekend, with investors questioning a potential Santa Claus rally and digesting the latest round of geopolitical news as well as the impact of winter storm Elliott.
While it's typically a quiet set of days between Christmas and the New Year's holidays, the coming days are likely to see some data emerge about the holiday shopping season building on what we learned from Mastercard yesterday. What did Mastercard tell us? Well, it found that US retail sales rose 7.6% year over year for what it's calling the holiday season between November 1 and December 24. That's stronger than its 7.1% forecast.
Now digging into the data, we found a few things. First, online sales rose about 10.6% year over year with in-store sales of about 6.8%. In-person dining remained strong with restaurant spending up more than 15% year over year. But weakness was found in electronics and jewelry spending, both of which fell more than 5% year over year.
When we take a look at the Mastercard data in full, it's clearly a positive for our thesis behind Amazon shares as well as that for UPS. But we have some renewed concerns about retailers in general this morning based on what Target announced. It's clearly speaking to the excessive bloated inventories that we've been concerned about, and Mastercard spoke to this by saying that retailer discounting was heavy during the holiday season.
So what did Target have to say? Well, they announced new discounts beginning today with what it is calling the Target clearance run. The event features special offers on thousands of popular items, including 50% off on clothing, shoes, toys, beauty products, home decor, and more. While we're not involved with Target shares, we do expect this to weigh on the company's margins, but also stoke a very competitive environment for other retailers.
It also speaks to one of the larger concerns we have as we get ready to transition from 2022 into 2023, and that is earnings expectations for the S&P 500. We've talked about this several times with members in recent weeks. And while the consensus figure for 2023 hasn't moved much, we are starting to see some firms cut their forecast to levels that are below those for this year.
Next week brings the December PMI data, and what it says about the speed of the economy could lead to more cuts as we approach the December quarter earnings season. This has us remaining in a cautious and prudent stance with the portfolio, keeping our inverse ETFs in play. And yes, they are doing the jobs that they were designed for most recently with the portfolio as the market has traded off the last few weeks.
Now shifting gears and talking about the portfolio and some action amid, again, what is typically a very quiet week, earlier today we added to the portfolio's position in Clear Secure, ticker symbol YOU. The shares have pulled back along with the market of late, but in the last few weeks, the company has continued to expand its airport offering, and this morning it filed an 8-K in which we learned it will soon start offering TSA pre-check. This is one of the announcements that we've been waiting for. And combined with other recent wins, we see it driving additional subscriber growth in the coming quarters.
As we make the trade adding to our position in YOU, we also increased our price target to $34 from $32 and boosted the rating to a one.
That's a wrap for today's rundown. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back with another one tomorrow.