{"id":251,"date":"2009-10-09T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T14:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=251"},"modified":"2018-08-22T20:11:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T00:11:27","slug":"economic-data-coming-in-nicely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2009\/10\/09\/economic-data-coming-in-nicely\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic data coming in nicely"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Happy Friday everyone!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Economic data continues to roll in and it is largely positive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">For example&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; font-size: 16px;\">September Retail Sales<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">September retail sales showed a lot of improvement with same-store sales up 0.6%. While a modest gain, this compares to big declines for the last 13 months. That number also compares to a 0.9% <strong>decline<\/strong> a year ago in September.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Many retailers posted positive gains, including Limited Brands, Kohl&#8217;s, Costco, <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Aeropostale<\/span>, <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">BJ&#8217;s<\/span> Wholesale Club, <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">TJX<\/span> (owners of <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">TJ<\/span> <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Maxx<\/span>), and Ross Stores. With the exception of <span id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\" class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Abercrombie<\/span> &amp; Fitch, most of those retail stores with negative results were down only modestly. What&#8217;s more those stores with declining same-store numbers generally beat analyst estimates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">If you look at the list of stores that had positive gains, they were stores that sell discounted merchandise. Clearly, the consumer is still trying to conserve income. However, for retail sales to have climbed means that the consumer <em>is<\/em> feeling better about the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">As I have stated many times, it is very important to pay attention to the U.S. consumer as the recession winds down. It is my hope that excessive use of debt has been wrung out of the consumer consciousness, replaced by a greater proclivity to save for purchases. We shall see.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; font-size: 16px;\">Trade Deficit<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The August trade deficit declined 3.6% to $30.71 billion. This result was unexpected by Wall Street analysts, especially the rise in the U.S. exports component of the calculation. The trade deficit is a notoriously inconsistent number, though. Why? Because it includes foreign oil imports and the price of oil bounces all over the place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">However, U.S. exports are improving. This <em>is<\/em> a sign that the recession is scaring fewer people overseas, too. A good sign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">*****<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I hope that all of you have an outstanding weekend!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy Friday everyone! Economic data continues to roll in and it is largely positive. For example&#8230; September Retail Sales September retail sales showed a lot of improvement with same-store sales up 0.6%. While a modest gain, this compares to big declines for the last 13 months. That number also compares to a 0.9% decline a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}