Best and Worst Stocks After Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday: How quaint! The idea that U.S. retail would rely on a whole separate day to push online retail over brick-and-mortar retail seems crazy in this day and age. Businesses like Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) now treat Black Friday and Cyber Monday less as individual events and more like attraction points of a larger season (not unlike the gift-giving holidays that birthed them).

Shoppers spent a record $52.4 billion on Black Friday this year, up 16.4% from 2010, but those numbers reflect spending in stores, online and earnings from promotions that ran across the weekend. People already are spending, so how much of an impact could little ol’ Cyber Monday have?

Pretty big, as it turns out. IBM Coremetrics reported Tuesday morning that consumers spent29% more online Monday than they did online this Black Friday, with the average online order coming to $198.26 — up from $193.24 in 2010. ComScore on Wednesday said sales came to a whopping $1.25 billion on Monday, good for year-over-year growth of 22% and an all-time high since the National Retail Federation named the day in 2005.

But not all companies celebrate Cyber Monday the same way. Which companies walked away from Cyber Monday looking like champions? Take a look.

Biggest Winner: eBay

eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), the online auction website, pushed attractive deals on Cyber Monday like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPads marked down by $50, which sold out in less than two hours. Sales through eBay weren’t the only profit driver for the company on Cyber Monday, though. Payment service and eBay subsidiary PayPal saw massive traffic from customers shopping online. Mobile traffic through PayPal alone was up 552% from 2010 and up 17% from Black Friday. EBAY stock also has enjoyed a holiday boost of almost 5% from last week’s close.

Runner-Up: Amazon

Surprise, surprise. The king of online retail continued its winning streak from Black Friday. Even before Cyber Monday proved to be a record-earning day for online retailers, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) shares jumped 6% on Monday, mostly on anticipation of big sales. While Amazon itself hasn’t announced a tally for Cyber Monday just yet, the numerous retailers that sell goods through Amazon’s partner program are reporting significant growth over 2010. For instance, Amazon partner eBags reported Cyber Monday sales up 105% year-over-year.

Honorable Mention: Microsoft

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been having a strong holiday all around thanks to the profitability of its entertainment segment. The company sold just less than 1 million Xbox 360 game consoles in the week leading up to Cyber Monday, which, including sales of the Kinect motion control device, should equate to around $300 million in total Xbox sales. The Xbox 360 also was a hot item for Cyber Monday, with major deals promoted through Amazon and others, meaning that $300 million figure is likely to grow by a significant margin. Microsoft shares were up 4% from Friday as of this writing.

Biggest Loser: Groupon

How far and fast the mighty fall. This time last year, the daily deals business looked like the future of electronic commerce, and Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) was poised to be the Amazon of the market. Instead, the company has seen its business model copied by everyone on the web, and GRPN’s public offering has been one of the biggest IPO duds of 2011.

Groupon did almost nothing in terms of Cyber Monday promotion, as opposed to major competitor LivingSocial, which gave away gift cards to major retail partners. However, Groupon did damage control Wednesday, saying it sold 650,000 holiday deals on Cyber Monday, 500% more than in 2010. (In comparison, LivingSocial was projected to be around 350,000.) GRPN shares were up 7% by Wednesday’s end, but the gains merely put the company flat for the week at around $17.30 — far from the $31 it was trading at in early November, and still under its IPO pricing.

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned stocks. Follow him on Twitter at�@ajohnagnello�and�become a fan of�InvestorPlace on Facebook