re: Retail sales in April point to slowing economy

lulz, did you miss this?

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Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales gaining 0.2% in April. Retail sales in April increased 3.1% from a year ago.

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if the economy tanks he will have trouble with re election

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So what solutions do Beto, Bernie, Booker, Buttigieg et al offer that are election-winning magic bullets?

I don't see any links within the article. Is the increase/decrease data cited based on the previous month or the same month from last year?

If compared to March, this may have something to do with a relative drop in April

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Overall consumer spending, which includes spending on services such as haircuts and travel, jumped in March by the most in nearly a decade.

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specifically, do you understand the inherent flaws in the FED NOW forecast...it is lambasted on many levels and is used AT BEST as a supplementary tool.

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i think you meant to reply to me, not to zach

I don't care if "it is lambasted"; it's certainly decent for a rolling benchmark. And no one around here lambasted it (before or after the fact) when it was calling for 5+ or 4+ in quarters that wound up way, way lower.

I wouldn't say it's the best model, but it's frequently-updated and fairly transparent, not to mention free. There are certainly other forecasting houses whose projections i consistently prefer over GDPNow's. But despite the fact that it's not the best, it certainly ain't bad.

Really, I starting basing any tracking threads i've made around it because of how highly-touted it has been here at certain times, but also because of how it gets updated on the release of more important data points as they roll out over the months. That doesn't mean that i adopt their number as my own expectation.

BTW, my 2018 prediction, made and posted on this board in February 2018, was for 2.9-3.0. And what was the result? 2.9. (Obviously, i can link the prediction.)

Also btw, GDPNow is projecting 1.1% as of today for this quarter. As i said, i think that's a good bit too low, although the 4.2% that we saw at this time last year looks more and more like it's out of the question too.

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Retail sales in April point to slowing economy

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Obama's economy!

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January had a big decrease

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This was in the article.

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Retail sales have been on a seesaw pattern, rising at a healthy pace in January, then falling in February

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Not disputing anything, just trying to understand how they arrive at these figures. Would that be a healthy rise as compared to December?

This is also in the article, which seems to contradict the above quote

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jumped in March by the most in nearly a decade, but that followed small increases in the previous two months.

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So a healthy rise in January, followed by a decrease in February. But later in the article, March followed two months of modest increases. Am I reading this all wrong, or this article all over the place?

I see.

So bottom line:

Compared to previous month:
January 2019 - healthy rise
February 2019 - decrease of a size not described
March - increase of a size not described
April - either small decrease or unknown based on article content

Compared to its 2018 counterpart:
January 2019 - small increase
February 2019 - small increase
March 2019 - biggest increase in a decade
April - either small decrease or unknown based on article content

eta:
It may be better to read whatever CNBC read instead of reading CNBC's account of it.

yeah basically. only thing that's weird is that the March m/m jump wasn't the biggest in a decade bc there was a bigger one in 2017. and april19 was only a decrease in m/m terms, not compared to april18.

month/month:


month19/month18:

in retail you see an apparent slowdown in retail from late 2018 fairly clearly

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It may be better to read whatever CNBC read instead of reading CNBC's account of it.

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true 100% of the time and not just for cnbc; they're probably one of the least bad

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So sales went up 1.7% in March.

Then only went up 1.5% in April, so that's a .2% drop?

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April saw a .2% drop in sales from March, which would be a 1.5% increase from February.

Based on the charts above, we have not seen a monthly y/y sales result that went down since 2010 or so.

Eta

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only thing that's weird is that the March m/m jump wasn't the biggest in a decade bc there was a bigger one in 2017

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Definitely a bigger dollar figure jump, but possibly the percent wasn't.