fbpx

same store sales

There Is No Spending

By |2016-03-07T16:02:14-05:00March 7th, 2016|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The fiscal year for retailers ended in January with nothing like what it was supposed to be. Still, as always, the suggestions remained that a rebound in consumerism would be before too long. If it wasn’t to be evident right away in February, the start of the 2016 fiscal year was at least supposed to be back in the plus [...]

Widespread and Worse

By |2016-02-19T17:24:48-05:00February 19th, 2016|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

When Janet Yellen testified to Congress last week, she was as usual careful with her words. Alan Greenspan once called it “mumbling with incoherence” but there is very little left to rambling in Yellen’s predicament. Where Greenspan was once the “maestro” and Bernanke the “hero” Yellen is stuck holding the bag, and I think she knows it. In truth, there [...]

Resetting Production And Risk Perceptions

By |2015-12-31T16:16:12-05:00December 31st, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While we await a flood of data for December spending and retail activity to confirm what we already suspect by proxy, the updated figures for November going backwards in the production process stand as yet another warning. Retail sales figures were typically abysmal, as were private indications of spending. The Thompson Reuters Same Store Sales Index, a measure of actual [...]

The Conspicuous Temperature Gradient of Finicky US Consumers

By |2015-11-11T10:30:23-05:00November 11th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Janet Yellen and orthodox economists claim that the economy can only be gaining, and that word is taken, on faith, as if some updated, modern gold standard for meaning. No matter the contrary in actual evidence and observation, the “word” remains as if diktat were the only employ. It has produced some very strange dichotomies, particularly of late, where those [...]

Yellen Can’t Get Cooperation

By |2015-02-25T18:12:50-05:00February 25th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

Janet Yellen’s testimony concluded, no one gets any more clarity about what the FOMC actually thinks. However, that itself is in one sense an indication as she vacillated a little too much about making a firm commitment to either the recovery or “transitory” oil prices. QE3 ended months ago and we are seven years into this thing already, but there [...]

Trolling The Economy, Too

By |2014-09-09T15:56:53-04:00September 9th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Maybe using the word “troll” in this sense is overdoing it, but in more than one way it seems deserved given what has been presented. The retail picture so far at the beginning of the back-to-school season has been, at best, mixed. But you don’t get that idea from most of what is presented. As Thomson Reuters starts its latest [...]

‘American Customers Continue to be Cautious’; First Quarter No Longer Looking Like An Aberration

By |2014-08-15T10:05:46-04:00August 15th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

With retail sales this week bringing an “unexpected” shock to those forecasting a robust economic rebound (outside of inventory, anyway) in the US, further confirmation has been offered pretty much everywhere else. WalMart’s quarterly report was as it has been since the end of 2012 with continuing slow erosion. US same store comparables were flat, which is something of an [...]

WSJ: Spring Without Much Bounce

By |2014-07-11T14:53:41-04:00July 11th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

You hear it repeated incessantly that the US economy is consumer-driven, and perhaps it is in some very narrow aspects. The idea, however, that consumption accounts for 70% of the economy is false, a figure derived from GDP calculations that include, among other artificial creations, an imputation for homeowner rent equivalence (BEA estimates how much a homeowner might pay themselves [...]

Go to Top