Look out! US retail sales are comin’ in hot, dammit.
The last top-tier macro release the Fed will see before deciding on the appropriate size of this month’s rate cut found nominal spending doubling and tripling up consensus across the world’s largest economy.
Headline retail sales rose 0.6% in August, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That was three times quicker than the pace expected by economists.
The ex-autos print was even stronger, at 0.7%. The control group, which grossly overpaid weatherpeople use to “refine” their GDP guesstimates, likewise notched a 0.7% advance, nearly double the increase expected by those same overpaid weatherpeople.
July’s headline was revised to show a brisker MoM advance. So August’s print marks back-to-back 0.6% increases. On the heels of a 1% increase in June.
Nine of 13 categories showed a gain. Only furniture and “miscellaneous” retailers tallied a meaningful decline. Food services & drinking places, the only services sector category in the release, showed a 0.7% increase.
With the caveat that this is nominal spending — i.e., not adjusted for inflation — exactly nothing about these figures argues for aggressive Fed cuts.
What was it I said in this week’s macro preview? Oh, yeah, this:
Eventually, the combination of slower hiring (or even net firing) and stubborn inflation should weigh on spending. But betting against the American consumer can be a frustrating experience. Americans are addicted to consumption. Being out of a job and short on money isn’t sufficient to dissuade addicts. Not initially, anyway.
In all seriousness, how long do you think that Trump would allow the Commerce Department and Howard Lutnick to report down numbers?
These Bozo’s are in the business of controlling every and all narratives concerning all aspects of this countries issues and its citizens way of life. They say it is so therefore it is true, period. And they keep saying it until there is so much disinformation that you can’t believe anything. Everything is up for question and debate. White is no longer white and black is no longer black, even if you the viewer can see the colors with your own eyes, then the viewer questions themselves.
Like Hitler said in 1925, “Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert”.
I hope everybody understands that according to Trump we are taking in billions of dollars FROM OTHER COUNTRIES because of the tariffs, which is really taxing ourselves. He says this over and over and over, and well over again, but leaves out the taxing part, until, well, you start believing it!
Bloomberg article says that the top 10% of earners are responsible for about 50% of the spending. Wealth effect. Scary.
The rich and wealthy will always have money to spend. The increasingly less fortunate wont, cant and are unable.
Rosenberg says seasonal adjustment was very aggressive, if historical seasonal adjustment used the adjusted number would have been negative. Unadjusted number flat vs historically +LSD. Checking the veracity of this is over my pay grade but my faith in US government reported data is rapidly fading. I think we’ll have to start relying on private data more and more.