It has to be one of the tougher years to issue a holiday sales forecast, but the National Retail Federation is jumping right in. The NRF predicts retail holiday sales will increase between 3.8% and 4.2%. The range is higher than the 3.7% average over the last five years. Retail holiday sales were only up 2.1% last year.

While the NRF thinks consumers are in good financial shape and retailers expect a strong holiday season, obvious wildcards like trade, global macro factors and even political distractions are noted.

The highly-watched NRF forecasts arrives just after the last few economic updates tilted to the negative side.

The last few holiday seasons has seen retail heavyweights Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Target (NYSE:TGT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) carve out more market share at almost everyone else's expense

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