Retail Sales and Industrial Production

We got two more economic reports today. First, the Fed said that industrial production rose by 0.4% in August. That matched consensus.

Here’s IP since the beginning of 2012. Notice the sharp downturn from late 2015 into early 2016. A lot of that was driven by the oil bust.

The last twelve months have been very good. IP is up nearly 5% which is an eight-year high. Contrast that with 2015 when IP fell by 4%.

The retail sales report showed a 0.1% increase for August. Excluding gasoline, retail sales fell 0.1% last month. In the last year, retail sales were up 6.6%, and excluding gasoline, they were up 5.6%.

Posted by on September 14th, 2018 at 1:08 pm


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