Retail Metrics said June comps fell 4.3% which is a touch better than the range of estimates of a decline of 4.5-5%. The month was impacted by the cold and rainy weather, tough comparisons with July ‘08 rebate checks (which is the last month of this comparison) and of course sluggish consumer spending.
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
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July 9th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Pervasive Yankeecentricity.
It’s been hot and dry throughout the south, but none of the commentators seem to know this. Also, we know it never rains in Southern California.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
If you read the Redbook release every Tuesday, they’ve predicted this for a month…I try to post it when I think about it…but Redbook has been telling us this was going to be a poor summer for consumer spending.