consumers across all income levels are pulling back on spending according to a barclays capital promotions tracker prompting analyst adrienne yih to downgrade a host of retail stocks our bottomup approach to analyze promotions across the retail landscape regardless of category and target income bracket suggests that retailers are struggling to drive traffic conversion and sales despite markedly cleaner inventory levels yih wrote in a research note tuesday many retailers had expected weak sales in the first half of this yea followed by a pickup in the second half however yih said the pace of sales and discounting suggests that this scenario a vshaped recovery is now less likely figs 6m mountain barclays downgraded figs shares to underweight from equal weight yih said investors should structure their holdings to protect against a product recession in other words they should limit their exposure to consumer discretionary names when investing in retail pick bestinclass stocks she said with that in mind barclays slashed its investment ratings on the following stocks to equal weight from overweight capri  national vision  canada goose  under armour and victorias secret  figs was downgraded to underweight from equal weight the cut in figs target price to 4 from 6 implies 45 potential downside from mondays close yih said that not only will the company face the same economic pressure as other retailers its also facing new competition from fabletics which recently entered the scrubs market while national vision shares were slightly positive in trading tuesday afternoon the other downgraded stocks were all lower figs shares shed 6 canada goose fell more than 5 and victorias secret was down more than 3 which names are wellpositioned in retail taking a look back at the 20082009 recession we have found that no company was immune to the broader pullback in spending yih said however she expects that consumers are more likely to seek out value by buying the items they need at offprice retailers such as tjx cos  ross stores and burlington stores also some companies have structural moats or companyspecific drivers that will help their performance among those are lululemon and nike  she said lululemon shares have risen 19 year to date while nike is almost 9 higher exposure to chinas economic reopening can benefit some companies but not enough to help michael korsowner capri according to the analyst higher income households are feeling the pressure of inflation and rising interest rates and that will hurt capri she said noting an increased pace of promotions in its fiscal third quarter capri shares were down nearly 5 on tuesday the stock has fallen 31 year to date cpri ytd mountain capri shares have fall 31 since the year started