Today's Retail Sales data is forDecember and so should be 'clean'from the perspective of the January storms which dramatically reduced consumers ability to spend year-to-date, as illustrated by BofA's 'rest of US' spending indicator...
After a big bounce in November, expectations were for a decent 0.4% MoM rise in retail sales to end the year (despite the plunge in consumer confidence signaled by UMich), but theactual print was a big disappointment with headline retail sales unchanged MoM in December. That is theweakest YoY retail sales growth since Sept 2024...
Motor Vehicle and Clothing sales tumbled the most while spending on Building Materials and Food & Beverage rose the most...
Core Retail sales was also unchanged MoM (a big miss from ther +0.4% MoM exp)...
Worse still the 'Control Group' which plugs into the GDP calculation, fell 0.1% MoM (far worse than the 0.4% MoM expected).
Of course, this December disappointment comes after a strong November so before you panic, perhaps some smoothing and seasonals are at play.
One thing that caught our eye was that all this data is 'seasonally adjusted'. If we look at the unadjusted data, a very different picture evolves...
That was the biggest December jump since 2020 (post COVID vaccines)...
Interestingly, 'real' retail sales (admittedly crudely adjusted via CPI) actually decline on a YoY basis in December...
Perhaps it's time for this alligator's mouth to snap shut?
Source: ZeroHedge News
