Yesterday’s confidence data showed a retracement in the ‘Trump Bump’ and now, just as BofA had predicted, US Retail Sales disappointed across the board in December. The Control Group rose just 0.2% MoM (missing expectations of a 0.4% rise) but it was Ex-Auto-and-Gas that missed the most (unchanged in December against expectations of a 0.4% surge) that was most worrisome as it appears Americans bought cars and not much else.
Earlier this week Bank of America warned that December retail sales could come in weaker than expected, when it looked at its internal credit and debt card spending data and found a 1.0% drop. Moments ago the official data released from the Dept of Commerce confirmed that once again BofA was right, when it announced that in December, US retail spending rose 0.6%, below the expected 0.7%, however much of this was thanks to spending on cars and gas. If one excludes autos, the rise was only 0.2%, below the 0.5% expected, and if one also excludes gas, there was no increase in spending in December whatsoever.
In fact this is the weakest year-over-year retail sales since Feb 2014…
Full Breakdown… Only gasoline and Auto sales rose notably…
This disappinting data should not be a total surprise.
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