by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
The Street
Advance retail sales have recovered to the trendline.
Lesson of the Day
If you give away enough free money, spending recovers.
Census Report on Advance Retail Sales
The Census report on Advance Retail Sales provides half of our “Lesson of the Day”.
Adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, July sales were $536.0 billion, an increase of 1.2 percent from the previous month, and 2.7 percent above July 2019.Total sales for the May 2020 through July 2020 period were down 0.2 percent from the same period a year ago.