047: Recent Retail Sales Report 09-15-23

Megan dives into the recent retail sales report and unpacks its surprising insights.

While the headline number showed a significant monthly jump, driven by rising energy prices and spending at gas stations, Megan uncovers a different story when you exclude volatile items like gasoline, energy, autos, and building materials. The underlying data reveals a modest increase of only about a tenth for the month, following a downward revision from the previous month.

Megan looks more closely at specific sectors, noting a drop in furniture sales and mixed results for back-to-school items like clothing and electronics. She also highlights weaknesses in discretionary spending categories such as internet shopping and dining out, indicating a potential trend of consumer weakness.

With oil prices remaining a key factor, Megan discusses what this means for consumers as we head into the fourth quarter. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to the podcast team at podcast@verdence.com.

Stay informed and gain valuable insights into the ever-evolving world of finance with Markets with Megan. Subscribe now to never miss an episode!

Megan Horneman the Chief Investment Officer for Verdence Capital Advisors coming to you today with our regular segment of Markets with Megan we're going to talk a little bit about the retail sales report that came out this week and it's not surprising to see that that headline number which includes everything that we spend money on that was the biggest monthly jump we've seen since May but it was all because of the rise in Energy prices and what's being spent at gasoline stations if you exclude all of that out so take out the volatile items like gasoline energy Autos building materials it actually showed some weakness underlying and they were that was only up about a tenth for the month and that's after it was a revised lower last month I'm just digging into some of the details if Furniture saw a pretty big drop some of this back to school items like clothing and electronics they were a bit higher but then when you look at some of the other discretionary items like internet shopping going to restaurants these things were weaker for the month so there is this underlying trend of the consumer getting weaker oil prices haven't really let up so we'll continue to watch the consumer and what it's doing to them as we go forward into the fourth quarter if you have any questions or comments please feel free to reach out to podcast at verdence.com thank you