Retail Sales Drop

This morning’s report on retail sales was not a good one. Wall Street had been expecting an increase of 0.3% for June. Instead, it was a drop of 0.3%.

An early Memorial Day holiday that may have boosted sales in May at the expense of last month, and a longer school year caused by the harsh winter probably contributed to the more subdued sales performance for the quarter. Stronger gains in incomes will probably be needed to give consumer spending, which accounts for almost 70 percent of the economy, a bigger lift heading into the second half of the year.

“The weakness is pretty broad-based, but it does look like categories that you would consider to be seasonal in nature looked to be very weak,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Stamford, Connecticut-based Amherst Pierpont Securities LLC, who projected June retail sales would be unchanged from the prior month. “It puts a little cold water on the idea that the consumer was gathering momentum.”

Retail sales are up 1.4% in the last year.

Posted by on July 14th, 2015 at 11:01 am


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