Pre-market today, the US core retail sales data for July (commonly known as “horror data”) was released. The monthly sales rate was 0.4%, the forecast was -0.10%, and the previous value was 1.00%. However, retail sales excluding automobiles and gasoline rose 0.7% month-on-month, better than market expectations of 0.4%, which is the same as the June data.
Note: None of the relevant data has been adjusted for inflation.
However, judging from automobile retail sales data, the month-on-month decline continued in July. Under the pressure of high oil prices, automobile consumption was weak. This also helped push the CPI price of new and used cars back down, which is beneficial to the decline in CPI.
Gasoline and automobile consumption declined, but the core monthly rate remained essentially unchanged, indicating that at a time when gasoline prices were falling, suppressed consumption power began to be released, and commercial consumption began to recover. Yesterday, Walmart $Walmart (WMT.US)$The latest earnings report released in the supermarket market's pessimistic expectations:
The company expects “comprehensive adjusted operating profit to fall by 9.0% to 11.0% in 2023, which is higher than the company's previous guidance of a decline of 11.0% to 13.0%, reflecting better performance in the second quarter.” This is because retail performance in the second quarter was better than expected by the company. At a time when oil prices were falling, along with the price cuts of retailers and e-commerce companies to remove inventory, optional consumption squeezed out by high gasoline prices was slowly recovering. In the third quarter and the second half of the year, a recovery in optional consumption can be expected. E-commerce and financial payment companies can pay attention, including Amazon $Amazon (AMZN.US)$, Shopify...