Again, better than expected data buoys markets as the tepid recovery appears not to be worse than tepid. Today the Department of Labor reported a drop in initial jobless claims that seems to confirm the employment or jobs headline from last Friday. Low initial claims do tend to correlate with rising employment levels, so it is appears to be plausible [...]
Year over year retail sales in January were the best in a few months, but on an adjusted basis were rather lackluster. Again, I don’t find the pursuit of month-to-month precision illuminating and it has clearly caused disconnects between adjusted and unadjusted data (I know, a recurring theme). The adjustment factor (the divisor) for January 2013 was 0.92, while the [...]
Seasonal adjustments or unadulterated data? Imputations and trend-cycle analysis or extrapolating trends from raw data? After beating consensus estimates for two months in August and September, seasonally-adjusted retail sales came back down to earth in October. One of the primary drags on growth was a rather large decline in automobile sales – a topic we have covered extensively in our [...]
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