by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
The stagnation zone
Our ever exuberant US consumers spent on average $89 a day in March on “discretionary” items, according to Gallup’s Daily Tracking survey. That was up five bucks from February, which is within the typical range of seasonal increases. It matched the previous high for a month of March since the Financial Crisis: March 2013. In March 2014 and 2015, consumers spent less: $87 and $86 respectively. Flat for the past four years!
But March is a peculiar month, with strong predictive qualities for the entire year. Gallup: