Best Retail Sales Report in 18 Months

This morning, the Census Department released the best retail sales report in 18 months. For March, retail sales rose by 1.1% which was 0.2% above expectations. Some of this was a rebound due to the weather’s impact earlier this year.

A 0.7 percent gain in retail sales excluding autos was the biggest in more than a year after a 0.3 percent increase in February, today’s data showed. The figures used to calculate gross domestic product, which exclude categories such as food services, auto dealers, home-improvement stores and service stations rose 0.8 percent in March after rising 0.4 percent the prior month.

The market was also helped by a better-than-expected earnings report from Citigroup ($C). By most conventional measures, Citigroup is a very cheap stock. However, I’m not willing to go near it until they’re allowed to raise their dividend to a respectable level. Citi has paid out a penny per share for the last few years. Bloomberg notes that mortgage lending has plunged to a 17-year low. For seven quarters in a row, mortgage originations at Wells Fargo ($WFC) topped $100 billion. Last quarter, that fell to $36 billion.

Shares of Medtronic ($MDT) are getting dinged today. On Friday, Edwards Lifesciences “won a court order limiting U.S. sales of Medtronic’s CoreValve system.” MDT was also downgraded by JPMorgan Chase.

The Wall Street Journal runs one of my favorite headlines: “Stock-Market Jitters Put Investors at Ease.”

Posted by on April 14th, 2014 at 10:01 am


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