The word of the day is “down”. The Advance Retail Sales report shows a decline for the third month.
A revision took away a small bit of the sting as the December 2017 to January 2018 percent change was revised from down 0.3 percent to down 0.1 percent.
However, the numbers, led by autos, are not pretty.
Sales by Business
Hurricane Impact Vanished
Except for building materials, the hurricane impact is history.
Last autumn I stated there would be a hurricane boost with a payback in the first quarter. Here we are.
Year-Over-Year
Year over-year numbers still look good, but how long will that last?
Here’s a hint: Compare year-over-year (4.3%) to September through November (0.6%).
Econoday
Econoday blows it again with this bogus comment: “There really should be no alarm on the consumer as retail sales in fact remain positive, evident in the total year-on-year rate which is up 1 tenth to a respectable 4.0 percent with the control group up 3 tenths to 4.2 percent. Should spending on services continue to show strength, consumer spending can still post passable first-quarter results.”
Where did they dig this person up from?
Heading into the report this was the consensus opinion: “Retail sales are expected to show some snap back in February with Econoday’s consensus at a solid 0.4 percent. When excluding autos, where unit sales were flat in February, forecasters also see a 0.4 gain percent as they do when excluding both autos and also gasoline. When excluding autos, gas, food services and building materials, control group sales are expected to come in at a 0.5 percent gain.”
Consumer Confidence?
Every month I laugh at meaningless consumer confidence numbers.
Economists look at confidence, a coincident indicator of the stock market and/or gasoline prices and proclaim “confident consumers will spend”.
They do, until they don’t.
Spending Projections
Earlier this morning I posted a chart of Consumer Spending Projections. Here’s the chart again.
Economists say that because consumers feel good, they will spend more. Here we have a survey that actually asks consumers what they will spend, but the Fed does not believe its own survey.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Housing – Retail sales – Auto Sales – HARD DATA
Mish why the doom and gloom? Port traffic is at an all time high. The economy is expanding. Philly and New York fed manufacturing showed solid growth in march. The economy is full steam ahead. Get your cognitive bias out of your mind
Or, are those seasonally adjusted numbers? It doesn’t say so, but that would explain comparing January sales to December sales.
It seems that all categories are up about 4% from a year ago, except sporting goods which is down 3.5%, and online, which is up 10%. That’s kind of ironic considering that the only recent large scale retail construction locally are huge new stores for Dick’s sporting goods and Scheel’s sporting goods. I don’t see why you’re surprised the retail in January and February were down from December. Isn’t that true every year?
Dealers might need to start stacking vehicles on top of one another,park em out in the desert like airplanes or maybe (most likely)fed will quietly print up a trillion (or 2)and buy up all those rusting vehicles sitting on dealer lots