Posted on 01/14/2015 6:53:58 AM PST by John W
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stock markets opened deep in the red on Wednesday after retail sales in December dropped at a faster-than-expected pace.
Headline retail sales dropped 0.9% last month, reflecting the steep decline in gas prices, but far deeper than expectations for a 0.1% drop. Core sales, excluding volatile items such as gas and automobiles, dropped 0.3%. Forecasts were for an increase of 0.5%.
The weak consumer spending data upset markets after the World Bank singled the U.S. economy as one of the few chugging along and dragging global growth higher.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestreet.com ...
Or was that a positive statement, falsely made on projected, I think obola's economy is alright, bullshit ?
Drink.
This was Christmas shopping season, mind you. Expect the first quarter of ‘15 to be even more bleak. Wonder how the Democrat lackeys at CNBC will try to spin this very bad news.
I guess most of the Christmas shopping was wrapped up early.
I believe the unadjusted numbers showed an increase in December over November; the seasonally adjusted numbers with Christmas factored out showed a decline.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229733
Bloomberg is in a state of shock this morning. I did more gift cards than gifts this year and if lots of folks did that, could be the Christmas bump for retail is a thing of the past.
Leaned a new word for me, "catchpenny". It refers to goods made to sell readily at a low price, regardless of value or price.
What's my point? I noticed during the Christmas season that a lot of catalog and online stores aggressively stocked items and marketed this year. The sales started very early. I was wondering if there would be a lot of surplus.
Well, last week, I just casually checked two very major online retailers for jewelry and ancient coins, looking at the "upper poor" range of pricing. Some of the prices had reached that "catchpenny" level. It made me wonder how good their retail season really was.
For my children, I forgave some debts for Christmas. The only presents I bought were Amex Gift cards for my grand daughters so their mother could use them throughout the year to get stuff they “had to have”. Wife and I did buy other gifts for them, but that was it mostly. My wife told me not to buy her anything, nor she to me.
Overall, Christmas this year was less than half of prior years.
” UNEXPECTED “
Why would declining gasoline cause sales to drop?
I think these guys make half this crap up.
Looks like the “U” word is making an unexpected comeback after a long hiatus in the government-media complex!
Result of Republicans winning the mid-terms.
Thanks.
The Saudi’s will live to regret what they have wrought!
I remember hearing that 70% of the December increase in spending was attributable to folks complying with the law and buying health “insurance” from the ACA exchanges.
Because the oil and gas industry is one of the only sections in the US economy that is working at full speed.
But ...
I always thought ...
You saw NU thing and heard NU thing ?
But the dopes in DC want to put more taxes on gasoline.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.