 After a bumpy first half, with retail a mix of the “haves” (or essentials) and “have nots” (non-essentials), we are expecting a somewhat better second half. Students are filtering back to school with mixedretail trends in that schedule – tech spend > apparel, home projects > dorm, and the season now stretching from the traditional July-Aug into October. Consumers are in a good place as they head back to work (many from home), after several months of government stimulus and reduced spending. Retailers are well positioned havingmanaged better than feared; low and clean inventory should help to protect margins, though it may keep a ceiling on sales improvement if the consumer comes back for holiday, particularly if the money spent in 2019 on "experiences" is shifted to goods and apparel (we see scarcity risk). IG Retailers benefited (driving tight spreads) from their largely essential status (other than the department stores). HY Retailers are more mixed driving 5 bankruptcies (JCP, JCG, NMG, TLRD, HRFITW), and 1 stressed exchange (PRTY), but the rest of the group has largely financed their way to get through COVID disruption.      Back-to-School brings us quickly to Holiday, where we are expecting sequential improvement but YOY to remain down through ‘20 and ‘21 (vs ‘19). Across HY we see ‘20 sales down 12% on average, and EBITDA down ~40% (60% excluding food/drug/convenience). Differentiating winners from losers will depend on 1) strength of ecom & BOPIS, 2) category mix (essentials, electronics for BTS, etc), 3) ratings –falling angels vs rising stars(JWNdown, ACI up), and 4) liquidityor financing needs.  We recommend investors Underweight the HG Non-Food Retail sector based on rich relative value, with the sector currently trading 32bp inside the JULI. The pandemic has driven asignificant surge in sales for many of the large “essential” IG retailers. Higher employee, store and logistics costs have been partial offsets but in general the sector is performing very well. We recommend investors Overweight the HG Food/Drug Retail sector, where valuation is more attractive about 10bp wide of the JULI. Performance across this sector has been mixed with very strong results at grocers while restaurants have seen revenues decline sharply, and drug stores have experienced modest headwinds.  We remain NeutralHY Retail, based on the balanced upside/downside. Onthe downside, we expect structural industry issues will persist and that we will see more closures than openings, a need to invest in IT, and control cost elsewhere. On the upside, most of the HY set that remains (after a handful of bankruptcies/ exchanges) have the liquidity to weather the turbulence. We are OW grocer ACI. Our highest yield pick is ANF. We are upgrading LB, and its bonds (ex the secured ‘25s)to OW from N (we had been OW the '27-'29s). We like a few swaps to pick up ~200-300bsp spread: out of GPS ‘27s into M ‘25s or ANF ’25s, or out of BBBY ‘24s into LB ‘27s (+50bps).