RETAIL SALES SMASH EXPECTATIONS, CAR SALES ON FIRE

Source: Business Insider

Septmeber retail sales are strong across the board

Headline sales gained 1.1%. That's nicely above the 0.7% month-over-month growth that analysts had expected.
Excluding autos, sales jumped 0.6%, which is double expectations.

This really confirms that car sales in the US are on fire (which we mostly already knew), and that the economy is far from collapsing, at least as of September.

Stocks are surging. Dow up 130.

This chart basically says it all.




Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/advance-retail-sales-for-september-2011-10

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"On a monthly basis, retail sales were up 1.1% from August to September (seasonally adjusted, after revisions), and sales were up 7.9% from September 2010."

-snip-
The consensus was for retail sales to increase 0.8% in September, and for a 0.4% increase ex-auto.

This was a strong report, especially with the upward revisions to both July and August.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/10/retail-sales-increased-11-in-september.html

Let's watch October unfold.

Could not survive football season without it :-).

nice.

Our dryer broke down so we just bought a new dryer too.

Those purchases wont show up until the October data though.

It seems pretty busy out there and I have a bunch of construction that has started within the past month or two going on in my general stomping grounds. Why did everyone start building more now then they have in the last three years? I'm not sure. It has made some of the recession talk seem incongruous with what I drive by every week.

orange like Boehner. Then it went to black. So we needed a new one. We're putting in a new floor and my husband went out and bought power tools, but that won't show up until next month. We didn't need all those expenses since we had a big year for family weddings and graduations and we are retired....

I know what you mean about the construction. Even here in rural Pennsylvania it doesn't seem like it's a bad recession. Not like in the early 80's (but we were living in Houston, TX then)and moved back to Pgh. when the steel industry collapsed. Bad timing and my Dad warned us not to come home.

Maybe we've turned a corner on the economy :shrug:.

yesterday. We paid cash and made sure to buy from a local family owned business. AND, they gave us a better deal on the exact same appliances we were looking at at Sears and another big box store; a cheaper extended warrenty; and free next day delivery and installation. They're coming today and the guys said they would put my old ones at the curb, in the garage, where ever I wanted them.

This experience has busted the myth for me that buying locally is more expensive and the service is poor. And we helped the economy!!

and well :-).

If you'd like to help undermine OWS that is.

Frankly, the people who can least afford it are the ones who get hurt the most when things get worse which is why I find if so disgusting when it seems like people are hoping for bad economic news.

their execs exorbitant bonuses for laying people off, and if you're not buying into nukes, weapons, the war machine, the pollution machine...come to think of it, there are damn few companies to invest in.

And PS, on a random tangent from your post:

I love business mags that claim that because the stock market is up, the economy is up. I've seen no proof that there is a correlation between stock prices and the actual economy in which people live and need to work. In fact, I'd argue that they are inversely related. B of A (or any Corporation X) announces that it is firing hundreds or even thousands of people? Its stock price goes up. Boom. Like clockwork.

that business and retail sales ARE up, and thus giving equities a bit of a boost.

But as I said, I think the data may be suspect (not sourced); that the relationship between the stock market and the real economy is random, not causal; and the report also says nothing about jobs. That's all.

There is nothing wrong with owning stocks. Nor profit, nor corporations, nor being rich.

The root problem is the influence of wealth on government policy.

I wish the OWS movement would ditch the anti-capitalism ideology and focus on the corruption of government problem.

That's the case in my family.

...how easily are we fed these lovely red herrings?

You tell me...

Does 'pessimism' or 'optimism' become the 'discriminant' for you?

Our global economy is undergoing catastrophic change. Those individuals charged with monitoring, analyzing, and reporting economic 'trends' are well aware of the unpredictability of the human element (why do you think they stopped calling economic downturns 'Panics'?).

In short, monthly--even quarterly--reports (or 'assessments,' as it were) are seldom relevant to the 'bigger' economic landscape.

Also, we seldom acknowledge the regular 'revisions' of economic data released by the feds, to whit:



(From US DOC, BEA Current GDP Data released July 29, 2011--a Friday, naturally)

Our 'erudite' economists can offer short-term projections until the cows come home. It will not change the fact that disaster capitalism is both damaging and unsustainable, and that we are witness to global convulsions that promise to change our species' economic behaviors.

DU Doomers? I'd laugh, if only that weren't so pathetic. It is both demeaning and disingenuous to label me a "Doomer" on the basis of my one observation.

If you're looking for 'gloom and doom,' look no further than Christian Parenti's excellent new book, The Tropic of Chaos, from which I've gleaned this quote:



Just FYI, I am witnessing a great deal more verbal violence on this and other websites. I suspect that this is directly correlated with the distress and disorder now occurring globally. Recognizing this is not 'glooming and dooming,' dmallind. I, and others like me, are simply making observations about our socio-political landscape du jour.

There are legions of DUers who seek out only the negative and pronounce it both true and eternal, while either ignoring or questioning the same metric once it improves. You can see it everywhere, from unemployment data to consumer confidence to stock indices to ISM surveys to exchange rates to trade deficits. In many cases they are negative regardless of which direction they move in (an increasing trade deficit is bad because it means we are buying too mich "plastic consumer crap from China" and exporting nothing, but a shrinking deficit is not because we are exporting more or buying less plastic consumer crap, it's because "nobody has money to spend on basic needs"; an increasing workforce participation is people becoming desperate for income from all family members, but a decreasing rate is not fwewer families becoming desperate, rather it is people becoming discouraged and giving upm - an increase is never though people becoming encouraged to seek work again).


People drawing inferences from only negative data does not mean they are making valid observations about the socio-political landscape as it exists - it means they think the landscape is deteriorating and seek evidence to support that.

Only when people accept both positive and negative results from the same metric on a consistent basis do they draw correct observations from it. Consumer spending is a very clear metric with no wiggle room. The economy improves when it increases and shrinks when it decreases, when properly adjusted and reported. The latter is every bit as valid and credible as the former - everywhere but DU that is.

That would be lovely, if said metrics were accurate. That's why I question the validity of data that gets thrown out for public consumption, particularly data that is provided monthly or even quarterly.

On this, and probably many other issues, I think we can agree to disagree.

"Don't get so self-absorbed"? Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!

one month do not a trend make

We will see how October plays out.

Really? What exactly does the Y-axis represent?

All the fastest movers off of dealer lots are imports.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/chi-fastest-selling-new-cars-photos-20111012,0,1405985.photogallery

So, why did I automatically think of this commercial in the movie "Used Cars"? :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu8wssjb3CA

Friend's car was dying and cost her $2000 to fix over the past few months and it was still coughing and sputtering. She was contemplating a new or newer used car and ended up with a BRAND NEW 2010 Infinity for $250/mo. for one year. (She also had to put something down,around $1500). If anything goes wrong with the car, she can take it to the dealer and get it fixed FREE.

Not a bad deal, really. I saw the same model advertised for $34K today in the paper.

Here, have a seat on this deck chair. Can I get you a martini?

I am going to use this every time I see one of those 53-percenter posts.

scurrying to maintain themselves dry on a rapidly shrinking sand-island as flood waters rise.

And someone else direly needs to read Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"

Car sales increased around here because a bunch of gas stations that used to sell gas without alcohol quit doing it, so a whole bunch of cars that won't run well on it are being forcibly retired, mostly from people who really can't afford to buy new cars. It's typical of badly done economics to consider this a good thing.

If cars are in fact destructive to the environment, then it isn't a good thing to sell more of them. You can't have it both ways.

Retails Sales Beat Expectations On Levered Car And Gas Sales, As Inflation Picks Up Again In Import Prices
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/retails-sales-beat-expectations-levered-car-and-gas-sales-inflation-picks-again-import-prices

Subprime car loans and business vehicle inventory apparently make up the bulk of the increase in car sales.



Consumer confidence falls
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/october-consumer-sentiment-declines-2011-10-14?link=MW_home_latest_news

There are no citations, and the chart is particularly bad. What is an "ex auto" and what is a "gen mer"? Any reasonably experienced economic writer would have demanded a better chart in which a reader could understand what the bars meant, not some "insidery" abbreviations that sound like gobbledygook, with an unlabeled Y axis.

I mean really, if this data is from BEA, BLS, the Census, of the Department of Commerce, it should say so. It seems very amateurish to me (complaining about the article, not the OP).