Retail sales up for February

Thomson-Reuters (a newswire agency) reported today that its gauge of retail sales in the month of February was up 4.0% vs. 2.9%.  Retail sales have now been up 6 months in a row after 12 consecutive down months.

Analysis: While 4.0% up is encouraging I have to point out that the 4.0% up is compared to last year’s February sales, which were dismal.  So the advance in the Thomson-Reuters figure is nice information, but it really is a normal sized increase over what was a terrible number a year ago.

My concern however, is that consumer confidence plunged last month.  That is typically a harbinger of very poor consumer spending.  Ergo, this number may not be so good this month.  I am anticipating that retail sales will likely taper off for the month of March.  The all important number remains the unemployment rate (see the post above).

Importance grade: 6; retail sales last month are nice, but that number happened concurrently with the massive ~18% drop in consumer confidence.

Jason