(CNBC) Retail stocks rose sharply on Thursday after companies in the sector, some of the worst performers this year, rebounded after earnings weren't as bad as feared.
The SPDR S&P Retail exchange-traded fund (XRT) spiked 1.1 percent higher, with shares of Abercrombie & Fitch, PVH Corp., Williams-Sonoma, Sears Holdings and Perry Ellis all trading higher. Shares of Tiffany and Home Depot also rose. Kroger's stock shaved off some of the XRT's gains, after it declined 4 percent on news that the Amazon-Whole Foods deal would close Monday.
"In my opinion, all the retailers knew that Q2 was going to be better than Q1 and the market forgot," Jan Rogers Kniffen, CEO of J Rogers Kniffen WWE, told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "Some of these earnings numbers were pretty ugly, but they were still better than expected."
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