Fundamentals 5/24

Housing:
-New Home Sales (for April) were 323,000 whch was better than previous and consensus.

Retail Sales:

-ICSC Goldman was +3.1% year over year.
-Redbook was +3.4% year over year.
-The Consumer Metrics Institute of online sales while still showing contraction has improved in the past week.

Recent weeks Retail Sales have been impacted by bad weather and high gasoline prices. The year over year should be a better metric but is sometimes bloated by “survivor bias” which eliminates the data of stores which were in business a year ago and are not in business now.

Retail Sales is a great early indicator of GDP. I see here a picture of modest growth.