Correlation Analysis
Costco Wholesale Corp vs W.W. Grainger, Inc.
COST vs GWW
+0.931
Very strong positive
When one moves up, the other tends to follow.
Costco Wholesale Corp
↗COST
Founded in 1983, Costco Wholesale now operates a global chain of membership-based warehouse clubs, delivering high-quality goods and services at consistently low prices. As of its most recent fiscal year, Costco operated approximately 910 warehouses, serving more than 80 million members across its three geographic segments: Costco US (approximately 73% of total revenue), Costco Canada (13%), and Costco International (14%).Costco's core value proposition—quality products at unbeatable prices—has yielded consistently strong member renewal rates (93% in the US and Canada and nearly 90% internationally). About 55% of Costco's fiscal 2025 revenue came from its grocery offerings, and another 25% from general merchandise.
Market cap 451.9B
W.W. Grainger, Inc.
↗GWW
Founded in 1927, W.W. Grainger originally distributed various motors via a mail-order catalogue. Over the course of the 20th century, the firm expanded into new industrial product categories and launched its first digital catalogue in 1995. Today, the company organizes itself into two segments focused on different customer bases. Its larger segment, high-touch solutions, offers a vast array of maintenance, repair, and operations, or MRO, supplies and bespoke inventory management services to larger businesses. Its smaller segment, endless assortment, operates two online platforms, Zoro and MonotaRO, that offer comprehensive catalogues of MRO supplies to smaller businesses. Grainger has operations throughout the world but primarily generates sales within the US.
Market cap 52.9B · 25,000 employees
Time Series
Relative Performance
Who Moves First
GWW leads COST by 6 days
GWW tends to move before COST.
After testing 13 timing shifts, the strongest relationship was +0.932 (they moved in the same direction).
Do They Crash Together?
Correlation by Market Regime
How these series behave when markets are rising, falling, or diverging. A correlation that holds in drawdowns is very different from one that only works in rallies.
Both Rising
+0.390
14 periods · Return correlation when both series rose
Both Falling
+0.869
7 periods · Return correlation when both series fell
Diverging
-0.630
14 periods · Return correlation when series moved apart
R-Squared
86.6%
Share of variance in one series explained by the other.
Trend Agreement
63.5%
How often both series moved in the same direction period-to-period.
Overlap Quality
1,254
Deep shared window — 1,254 usable pairs.
Significance
p < 0.001
95% CI: [0.923, 0.938]
Scatter
XY Regression
Pipeline
Data quality details
Pipeline
Data quality details
Pipeline Summary
1,254 paired data points survived the daily window.
Raw input
1,254
1,254
Normalized
1,254
1,254
Prepared
1,254
1,254
Aligned
1,254
1,254
Invalid removed
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Duplicates removed
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Alignment drops
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Series A
Costco Wholesale Corp
COST
Market cap 451.9B
Stock · 1,254 raw → 1,254 prepared
Series B
W.W. Grainger, Inc.
GWW
Market cap 52.9B · 25,000 employees
Stock · 1,254 raw → 1,254 prepared
Sign agreement
100.0%
How often both values share the same sign.
Zero crossings
43
Estimated crossover points between normalized spreads.
Slope
1.0633
Linear regression slope.
Intercept
43.3424
Linear regression intercept.
Related Extremes
Highest and Lowest Correlated
Saved 6 hours ago · ID: stock-cost-vs-stock-gww-daily