VIDEO

It has been a lousy year for traditional retailers.

Consumers have been surprisingly skittish, despite improvement in the job market and low gas prices.

Sales have been sluggish in the U.S. -- and the strong dollar has hurt the overseas operations of many big retailers.

But the American consumer hasn't cut up their credit cards and stopped shopping for good.

A quick look at the year-to-date stock performance of several big retail stocks clearly shows what the real story is.

Look at the numbers below while humming the old "one of these things is not like the others" song from Sesame Street.

Walmart (WMT): Down 30%

Target (TGT): Down 4%

Sears (SHLD): Down 32%

Kohl's (KSS): Down 21%

Nordstrom (JWN): Down 22%

Macy's (M): Down 39%

Best Buy (BBY): Down 17%

Amazon (AMZN, Tech30): Up 118%

Did you guess which thing was not like the others? Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong? If you guessed that Amazon is not like the others, then you're absolutely ... right!

Amazon is now trading near an all-time high and has a market value of $317 billion. That's $32 billion more than the COMBINED market value of the other seven retailers listed above.

Every day is Cyber Monday for Amazon.