Consumers Simply Never Showed Up | Alhambra Investment Partners – We Are Different..
The largest calendar segments of the retail universe are back-to-school followed closely by Christmas. The peak month for back-to-school is August which is usually the third or fourth biggest month of the year in terms of raw retail sales; with October right behind as Christmas retailing ramps up. September, which falls in between back-to-school and Christmas (at least historically), was relatively decent this year (4.46%) given the low standard of the post-2012 economy, but August was a plain mess which was far more important. Y/Y growth in August (ex autos) was just 2.5% which is so far below the 6-9% that “should” be evident in a recovery as to warrant some other classification.
That left retailers wondering if August was the aberration or September. With October’s figures having been released, unfortunately the August pattern has shown up at the start of the Christmas season as whatever happened to “boost” September was gone by the following month. The most important part of the retail calendar kicked off with all of 2.36% nominal growth over October 2013 – a month that inaugurated, at least to that point, the slowest Christmas season since 2009. In comparison, October 2013 saw 3.17% nominal growth, which is why retailers might want to start worrying (apart from auto dealers, of course).
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