Retail Sales: -0.3%

Posted 2012-11-14 09:36
by Karl Denninger
in Macro Factors

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $411.6 billion, a decrease of 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, but 3.8 percent (±0.7%) above October 2011. Total sales for the August through October 2012 period were up 4.7 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The August to September 2012 percent change was revised from 1.1 percent (±0.5%) to 1.3 percent (±0.2%).
Retail trade sales were down 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from September 2012, but 3.8 percent (±0.8%) above last year. Gasoline stations sales were up 7.7 percent (±1.7%) from October 2011 and nonstore retailers were up 7.2 percent (±3.0%) from last year.

I find this an interesting report for a number of reasons, with one of the most-interesting being the distribution of gains. For example, the gross gain from October 2011 was $20.418 billion.

Gasoline was $3.76 billion of that increase. Autos were $5.955 billion; between the two that was nearly half of the advance.

In general the report was quite a bit more-solid that I had originally expected, given that Sandy was in there. Another point is that unadjusted sales were actually up 3.5% -- so beware the so-called "seasonal adjustments" as well.

Verdict: Neutral to mildly-positive, which probably explains the market basically ignoring the release.

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