{"id":469,"date":"2010-08-13T12:23:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=469"},"modified":"2018-08-17T15:46:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T19:46:59","slug":"retail-sales-surprise-on-the-good-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/08\/13\/retail-sales-surprise-on-the-good-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Retail sales surprise on the good side"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the month of July, U.S retail sales were much stronger than expected, growing for the first time in 3 months.\u00a0 Specifically, the U.S. Commerce Department recorded an increase of 0.4%.\u00a0 Most of this increase was made up of increased spending on automobiles and gas.\u00a0 Sans car purchases retail sales were still up 0.2%.\u00a0 Basically these results were in line with expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysis:<\/strong> I consider these to be good results in the face of such stiff economic headwinds experienced since the beginning of May.\u00a0 Consumers are spending more despite the fact that their incomes and the overall employment situation have not improved.\u00a0 That means that there is a whiff of stabilization in the mood of the consumer.\u00a0 However, this mood should not be considered positive, just more stable…stable, but fragile.\u00a0 Still, given the talk of a double-dip recession, more jobs lost, declining corporate profits, and all of the other doomsday scenarios circulating, this has to be considered a positive result.\u00a0 Hopefully this results in some resiliency in the financial markets and some back bone on the part of consumers.\u00a0 But it would be hard to bet on that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Right now, the “game of chicken” that I have been describing for over a month is still strongly in place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Importance grade:<\/strong> 7; while encouraging, these numbers would be made even more important if there were a commensurate upsurge in consumer confidence.\u00a0 And I don’t think that is forthcoming until hiring improves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the month of July, U.S retail sales were much stronger than expected, growing for the first time in 3 months.\u00a0 Specifically, the U.S. Commerce Department recorded an increase of 0.4%.\u00a0 Most of this increase was made up of increased spending on automobiles and gas.\u00a0 Sans car purchases retail sales were still up 0.2%.\u00a0 Basically […]<\/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-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","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=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}