US July retail sales are due that the bottom of the hour and it will be a big report. The consensus is +0.1% m/m with the control group up +0.6%. The decline in the headline is due to falling gas prices so the control will be especially important this go-round.
Target earnings today were on the soft side and shares are down 2.3%. That's not necessarily an indictment of the consumer because there was some heavy inventory overhang to unload.
“If we hadn’t dealt with our excess inventory head on, we could have avoided some short-term pain on the profit line, but that would have hampered our longer-term potential,” Target’s CFO said.
Today we also get the Fed minutes, business inventories and weekly oil inventories. The Fed docekt includes a morning and afternoon appearance from Governor Bowman.
