In looking at a roaring stock market recovery, an uptick in commercial real estate investment and improving retail sales, one might naturally assume a recovery in retail – and retail real estate – would soon follow.

Well, that same person would do well to remember the old adage about assumptions.

The truth is, just because the retail market seems to have hit rock bottom and probably can’t get any worse, that doesn’t guarantee it’s going to get better, either.

And we’re sad to say, the outlook seems worst for the mom and pop, corner shop-type retailers that have been the cornerstone of successful neighborhoods for generations.

Some of the traditional signs of life for retailers – low vacancy rates, improved corporate earnings and rising sales receipts, among others – can be misleading.

Retail optimists might point to January statistics from the U.S. Commerce Department showing a 0.3 percent rise in retail sales for the month compared to the same time last year, the seventh consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases.

Any positive movement is good, but let’s not forget that even this slight bump was disappointing news for a stock market hungry for the kinds of bigger gains that would indicate healthy consumer demand and improved employment prospects.

That 0.3 percent gain must also be taken in a wider context. Retail sales figures are a year-over-year statistic. So that 0.3 percent January improvement is relative to January 2010 – a month in which consumers, battered by the brunt of the recession in 2009, undoubtedly retrenched themselves after an already tight holiday spending season.

Even modest improvement over what was essentially rock bottom rings pretty hollow.

Further proponents of the retail market might also note rapidly rising corporate profits as a sure sign that retail sales operations are on the march. But that neglects the fact that those rising profits are mostly built on the back of extreme cost-cutting measures – including the shuttering of many retail outlets – not rising top-line revenues.

Finally, diehard retail advocates – at least locally – will cite Colliers’ data showing a scant 7 percent retail vacancy rate in Massachusetts. This figure compares very favorably with a national retail vacancy rate of 11 percent.

But much of that local non-vacancy can be attributed to the relatively quick absorption of some of the vacant mid-sized and big-box space left behind by the closure of retailers like Circuit City and Linens ’N Things. And the remaining six former Massachusetts Circuit City and Linens ’N Things still sitting vacant will also soon be joined by another half dozen Borders bookstore locations.

But these large, vacant spaces aren’t being subdivided and filled by smaller, locally owned shops – they’re being filled by other big retailers that have the means, marketing and inventory to sustain themselves in these larger footprints.

Here, truly, is the worst news for small shopkeepers: Now well into the 21st century, growth by large retailers can no longer be counted on to trickle down to mom and pop shops.

Where once a large, seemingly generic retail presence may have been a boon to those offering more specialized or rare inventory, today that specialty niche is increasingly filled by the internet. Why scour dozens of specialty stores, when a quick search on eBay, Craigslist or any one of a dozen other online portals offers the same results?

Indeed, the large retailers themselves are increasingly positioning their big-box properties as glorified distribution centers and showrooms for their online inventory. Smaller retailers – even those with well-optimized, e-commerce capable web portals of their own – have little hope of competing.

We know the obituary for the corner store has been written many times before, and we hope we’re being overly ‘Chicken Little’ in our assessments, but we fear the current retail blackness is less the dark before the dawn, and more of a permanent shade.