Fundamentals 6/28: Confidence, Home Prices, Retail Sales

Consumer Confidence
Consumer Confidence as measured by the Conference Board fell to 58.5. This is a survey not hard data and all too often is associated with high visibility items such as gasoline prices. With Personal Spending flat (see comments of yesterday) and Final Sales of Domestic Products moved down to +0.6% (annualized) it certainly looks as if the consumer has no intention of spending more. Absence of an increase in Consumer Spending the economy will remain flat.

Case Shiller Home Price Index
-10-city, not Seasonally Adjusted: Month/Month +0.8%
-10-city, Seasonally Adjusted: Month/Month 0.0%
-10-city, not Seasonally Adjusted: Year/Year -3.1%
– I see no clear message in the above HPI data.

Retail Sales
-ICSC-Goldman Store Sales: Week/Week +2.9%
-ICSC-Goldman Store Sales: Year/Year +3.0%
-Redbook Store Sales Year/Year change +2.5 % down from +4.2% previous.
-These two reports don’t match Personal Spending or Consumer Confidence.
-One ongoing issue is that data on Retail Sales at chain stores suffers from “survivor bias” meaning that it takes no account for stores which closed. These data sets use only stores which are currently open and have been open for the past 12 months.