Retail Sales Headlines Are A Complete Joke
(YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE NUMBERS, HUH? GOOD CHOICE, I BELIEVE!)
http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/retail-sales-headlines-are-a-complete-joke/
DATED TODAY: June 18, 2020 by IWB
by Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics
The stock market promoting mainstream media this morning reported “U.S. Retail Sales Rose Record 18% in May” (e.g. the Wall St Journal). The S&P futures jumped from up 45 points to up 90 points. (NEMO, WASN'T THIS YESTERDAY? SORRY, I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION.)
But, as usual, the details are in the fine print of the report itself, and it’s apparent that nobody in the financial media bothered to look beyond the headlines.
n fact, the 18% rise is measured from April’s report, which was heavily depressed due to the shelter-in-place restrictions and the closure of many retail businesses. Funny thing about using the percentage change as the metric of measurement. If April had one dollar of retail sales and May had two dollars, the percentage gain would have been 100%.
Measured from May 2019, the “seasonally adjusted” numbers show that May 2020 retail sales dropped 6.1%. In retail sales terms, especially given the healthy rate of inflation built into the numbers, that’s a cliff-dive. If the numbers had been adjusted for price inflation, the percentage decline would have been even larger. Here’s the report if you want to check for yourself – Retail Sales.
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Measured from April's report? Wow.
So, it really dropped 6.1% ?
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
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