Look out: US retail sales are comin’ in hot, goddammit!

Nominal spending across the world’s largest economy easily outstripped consensus in this week’s only top-tier US macro update. A key underlying aggregate used to refine GDP forecasts was likewise robust.

At 0.9%, the headline retail sales print for May nearly doubled economists’ collective guess. It was the fourth consecutive monthly gain.

More importantly, the control group posted a 0.7% advance against expectations for a more modest, 0.4% increase.

Just two of 13 major categories (electronics and appliance stores and food services and drinking places, the only services-sector category in the report) showed a decline.

Gas station receipts posted an outsized 3.4% advance, but the key takeaway is that the surge in pump prices doesn’t appear to be dissuading consumers from discretionary purchases elsewhere.

Indeed, nominal spending excluding gas stations rose 0.7% in May, a sharp pickup from April’s pace on the same aggregate.

The strong showing comes despite still-dour (if improving) household sentiment and pervasive concerns about inflation’s corrosive effect on incomes.

All “K-shaped” caveats aside, and with the obligatory reminder that the saving rate was just 2.6% in April, among the lowest prints ever recorded outside the lead-up to the financial crisis, these figures hardly suggest US monetary policy’s holding back the economy.

The three-month average annualized pace for the control group now exceeds 9%, the quickest in almost four years.