Is planet retail set for a happy new year or a hard hangover?

Trading statements come in bunches at the beginning of January – like London buses – but after finishing their investor calls some CEOs will inevitably end up feeling like they’ve been hit by one, writes James Moore

Some retailers will report full bags, but for others January is the hardest month of the year (PA)

The iron ground and grey days of January at its worst have been all too appropriate as a backdrop for many of Britain’s retailers in recent years.

Trading statements come in bunches at the dawning of the new year: in that, they’re like London buses – but, after finishing their investor calls, some CEOs will inevitably end up feeling like they’ve been hit by one.

They’ll be struck by the dawning realisation that their P45 won’t be long in coming, and that they’ll be spending more time than they’d like in the company of headhunters who are only offering non-executive posts, which don't come with bonus packages.

There will be some winners too, even though they've been a mite harder to find in the wake of the high-street carnage wrought by Britain’s enthusiastic adoption of online shopping.

First out of the stalls when it comes to the post-Christmas rush will be clothes retailer Next. Of late, its shares have looked like they’re on a mission to climb the highest peaks on planet Retail.

Simon Wolfson, the longstanding CEO, is a past master at the game of “expectations management”. He can usually be counted on to under-promise and over-deliver. That might not cut it this time around. He’ll have to do something special to justify the stock's performance.

In theory, he won’t have to share the spotlight: There isn’t anyone else of significance scheduled to report alongside Next in the first week of January.

But there’s usually at least one among the bevy of peers and rivals that will have eaten something sufficiently nasty over Christmas to force them to throw up a profit warning before their scheduled reporting date.

Elsewhere, the supermarkets will be watched closely, Tesco in particular. This will be David Lewis’s post-Christmas swansong.

Timing your exit is almost as important a skill for a CEO as managing investors’ expectations. Is Lewis leaving his successor, Ken Murphy, a company athletic enough to keep pace with the irksome discounters Aldi and Lidl. Or, with the chain’s Asian jewels in Thailand and Malaysia potentially up for sale, will we see the first sign of one of those nagging injuries that upend so many sporting careers.

The most recent figures from research consultancy Kantar, which produces a survey of the grocery market, didn’t look pretty for any of the traditional big four (Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda being the other three), but Tesco seemed to be suffering the least.

Sainsbury’s continues to hold second place in terms of market share, even in the wake of its ignominious failure to pull off a merger with Asda. Its Christmas numbers will be no less significant.

Earlier this year, there were rumours that the board had been sniffing around potential replacements for CEO Mike Coupe. They were fiercely denied, but if Sainsbury's doesn’t start to show more signs of life and a concrete plan B soon, it isn’t a winter chill that he’ll have to worry about. His seat will be hot enough to melt lead.

Among the punch-drunk general retailers, the merest hint of an encouraging sign from M&S would feel like a gold medal. The payoff, if there is one, from its buying half of Ocado’s UK retail business will be further down the line.

John Lewis reviving would be something to unequivocally cheer. This employee-owned exemplar of a better kind of capitalism is in better shape than many of its peers. But the bonuses its staff used to be able to count on have evaporated. There’s no doubt that it will be a high-street survivor – it's just that this is a business you want to see doing more than that.

There’s nothing to cheer when it comes to fast fashion if you consider its environmental impact. But BooHoo vs Asos, both of which compete for the affections of young online shoppers, is a fun battle to watch from the City’s perspective. Primark, part of Associated British Foods, has proved you can make a success of bricks and mortar by selling cheap clobber. It continues to open stores like it’s going out of fashion.

Scandal-blighted Ted Baker will be under a harsher spotlight after its annus horribilis. Anything resembling a sign of life will be roundly cheered. Dixons Carphone recently showed that it is cutting its losses, but an improvement in sales would be nice.

There’s lots of life at JD. The same is true of its rival Sports Direct. The former has been a rare shooting star of the high street, but the latter has also found some sparkle, with its shares performing like a sprinter on steroids and its boss, Mike Ashley, touting signs of green shoots at House of Fraser, the department store chain he bought out of administration. If those green shoots are confirmed, he’ll be able to flip the bird to his many doubters.

“Mad” Mike Ashley is how they started to refer to him in City bars when he set out on the acquisition spree that brought the troubled department-store chain, along with a string of other similarly embattled businesses, under his aegis.

They’ve since gone quiet and it’s Ashley who’s laughing now. No wonder, given what the shares' spectacular recent rise has done for his personal wealth. Maybe he was on to something when he embarked on his audacious bid to make the entire high street a wholly owned subsidiary of Sports Direct plc.

One thing to bear in mind: this company is never free of noise. It’d be foolish not to expect more of that.

Looking at some of the other names about which there are questions, you wonder if he’s quite done with picking up companies among the high street’s long tail of those struggling for tuppence ha’penny.

Fun and games. But there’s a bigger picture too.

Economic growth in Britain has stalled so there’s more than you might think riding on this batch of updates. They'll give some indication of the mood among consumers.

Those consumers have bailed out UK plc before, but if they fail to bite at what's on retailers' shelves this time, the new Conservative government may be greeted by some nasty-looking numbers to explain away. Its honeymoon could prove short.