The holiday season is coming. This is the time when businesses gear up for the make-or-break season of their business. Some of the stocks that usually pop at ”the most wonderful time of the year” include these companies:

Amazon, the world's largest retailer has had a worse than expected year so far but according to the Wall Street experts, it is still a strong buy with its 18% upside potential. On the other hand, this stock should be considered a long term investment rather than a short one since gains are less likely in 2021 according to the analysts. 

Target went on a hot streak, after the first wave of Covid-19, outperforming rivals like Walmart. 
In the previous pandemic holiday season, Target grew year-over-year sales by 156%. This time around the company has Disney on its side as it decided to triple the number of Disney shops within its stores. It’s a key strategy that should keep holiday shoppers coming in through New Year’s Day.

Best Buy, just like Target, has reached long-term container shipping partnerships needed to survive any supply-chain mess up that might occur around Christmas. Looking back at last year's holiday season, BBY stock price went down more than 10% after disappointing sales performance. But this year things look brighter for the company. In the most recent quarter, the company reported a 20% YoY increase in enterprise sales at $11.84 billion.

PayPal is strong and traditionally a major player during the holiday season. Recently, 13 million new accounts joined the company, compared to the previous quarter. At this point, the stock price is down more than 30% off its all-time high making it the perfect holiday stock. 

Starbucks’ newest quarterly report showed good results for the company. The company retained a good portion of the massive gains that its drive-thru operations experienced during the COVID shutdowns. Starbucks stock rose 9.45% during the last year and the same trend continued in December.