by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Holiday selling season is going to be a mess: Look not for what you want but for what the store has.
The holiday selling season is approaching, and a whole litany of weird shortages is ricocheting through the economy. Stuff suddenly gets hung up somewhere, on a ship, or in a port, and then ends up somewhere else, or it’s on backorder for months, as manufacturers are struggling with material shortages and in in Asia with Covid outbreaks that shut down factories for weeks at a time.
And stimulus-fueled demand in the US has been huge and relentless, while retailers are struggling with inventories, some more than others.