Sales firmed to an annual rate 16.23 million units in September after dropping below 16 million in August. This is about 7% higher than the historic average. Buyers delayed purchases because of price spikes and lack of inventory. The more interesting and important data are the production and inventory numbers. Production continues to rise as companies try to re-build inventory. [...]
Your cares and troubles are gone There'll be no more from now on! Happy days are here again! The skies above are clear again Let us sing a song of cheer again Happy days are here again! Lyrics: Jack Yellen, Music: Milton Ager That's certainly how it's felt since the turn of the new year with the NASDAQ up nearly [...]
Count retail sales (US) among the dead data. Like recent CPI’s and PPI’s, consumer spending on goods continues to be sky high – and yet markets (even stocks) don’t seem to care. For the month of June 2021, the Census Bureau believes total sales were up when compared to May, though not much as May’s estimate was revised lower. At [...]
I’m going to start with what might seem to be somewhat of a non sequitur if only because it’s one of those things you just have to laugh at. Researching historical cases and examples, I typically try to read as many contemporary thoughts or news articles as possible to gain a sense of what “everyone” was thinking at whichever times.In [...]
While the global inflation picture remains fixed at firmly normal (as in, disinflationary), US retail sales by contrast have been highly abnormal. You’d think given that, the consumer price part of the economic equation would, well, equate eventually price-wise. Consumers are spending, prices should be heading upward at a noticeable rate. To begin with, consumer spending – as pictured by [...]
The months of November and December aren’t always easily comparable year to year when it comes to American shopping habits. For a retailer, these are the big ones. The Christmas shopping season and the amount of spending which takes place during it makes or breaks the typical year (though last year, there was that whole thing in March and April [...]
A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer. If it [...]
OK, that’s more like it. Finally. American consumers absolutely splurged last month. According the Census Bureau, retail sales last month spiked by nearly 2% (seasonally-adjusted) from August, an unusually big monthly increase. This surge in spending during September 2020 sent the unadjusted total up by just more than 7% from September 2019. How good is that? Setting aside the statistics [...]
With all these warning signs pointing squarely back to the middle or end of July, it’s pretty clear that “something” changed the momentum maybe even direction of the economy’s reopening rebound. There’s also no question about what one key part of what might have been responsible, thus the quotation marks surrounding the word “something.”The federal government had been handing out [...]
Imagine you are locked in your home and can only go outside of it to purchase the bare necessities (this would’ve sounded ridiculous in every year before 2019). For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that you normally spend $100 every month, half of that on the basics. Thus, for the month preceding this lockdown you’d have laid out the full hundred [...]
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