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UK Retail Sales Unexpectedly Plunge As Christmas Goes Wrong
"Wet weather in December will inevitably attract some of the blame," ING's James Smith wrote Friday.
Smith was editorializing around an absolutely abysmal read on retail sales in the UK.
The month-to-month decline, a remarkable 3.2%, was the biggest drop since January of 2021 when, as ONS helpfully reminded macro observers, the economy was throttled by tighter COVID curbs nationwide.
Consensus expected a 0.5% decline. So, the actual print counted as a wild miss.
In addition to soggy weathe
Seems the stats confirm the pull-forward (or whatever) — the 3 month average YOY was down only 0.7 percent thru December. So January data may be more indicative of whether a rollover or a recovery is in the mix.