Today’s retail sales report was only the second piece of hard economic data on US economic performance in August. The other was the flat non-farm payrolls report. The sentiment indicators on manufacturing and consumers were overtly negative but the market needs more hard data to give up on the US recovery.
Economists noted that the sales report will probably mean further downgrades to growth and that it challenges the view of the resilient consumer. Retailers are making decisions about the holiday season now and this will encourage deep discounting.
