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After Abysmal Thanksgiving Spending, Cyber Monday Is Latest Dud, Rising Less Than Half 2013 Pace
Prepare to hear much more of the "retail spending slowed down because the economy is just too strong" excuses today, used most hilariously by the NRF on Sunday to explain the unprecedented 11% collapse in the 2014 4-day holiday weekend spend, when pundits "justify" why Cyber Monday sales were only the latest proof the US consumer - that 70% driver of US GDP - is being crushed day after day, pardon, basking in the warm glow of America's centrally-planned golden age.
Here are the facts: Internet holiday shopping rose only 8.1% on Cyber Monday yesterday, usually the busiest day for Web shopping as people return to their desks after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend. This was a big miss to expectations, and is less than half then growth posted just last year, when online sales grew at 17.5%, according to IBM.
Enter the spin doctors:
... Cyber Monday sales growth is slowing as consumers embrace the convenience of online shopping, spreading out their purchases instead of being lured by one-day specials.
... The declining pace of growth reflects an earlier start to the year-end shopping season, with Amazon.com Inc. and other online retailers offering online deals a week before Black Friday, when stores traditionally began offering holiday discounts.
... “We’re still getting really strong growth on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but people are realizing it’s a season of shopping,” Soren Mills, chief marketing officer at Newegg Inc., an online electronics retailer. “We’re releasing new deals all the time. We refresh constantly and bring in new deals to keep the excitement there. People are turning it from a day-long occasion to a monthlong occasion.”
... “Consumers are definitely shopping earlier,” said Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor’s chief executive officer. “Thanksgiving eats into Black Friday, and Saturday and Sunday are eating into Cyber Monday.”
But nothing compares to:
NRF's CEO Matt Shay attributed the drop to a combination of factors, including the fact that retailers moved promotions earlier this year in attempt to get people out sooner and avoid what happened last year when people didn’t finish their shopping because of bad weather. He also attributed the declines to better online offerings and an improving economy where “people don’t feel the same psychological need to rush out and get the great deal that weekend, particularly if they expected to be more deals,” he said.
Yes, consumer spending is plunging due to a stronger economy. Clearly this guy went to Princeton.
All of which is not only funny, but an outright lie as well, because as reported previously, when aggregating all the Thanksgiving spending data from Thursday to Sunday, we find that shoppers spent an average $159.55 online, down 10.2% from $177.67 last year. This took place as there was an actual decline in the percentage of Black Friday weekend shopping taking place online. So not only did Americans buy less online, they spent less online!
Which is why, of course, one needs spin. The problem is when people no longer buy, pardon the pun, the bullshit:
This year, many shoppers stayed home. The NRF had predicted that 140.1 million customers would visit retailers last weekend. Instead, only 133.7 million showed up. The slow start may make it harder for retailers to hit sales targets over the next month. The NRF had predicted a 4.1 percent sales gain for November and December -- the best performance since 2011.
And it may still get it... if all retailers go "full Amazon" and liquidate their wares well below cost, leading to another wave of retail bankruptcies and even more evil, evil deflation.
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Consumer discretion and disposable income when recapped with revised data against unrevised data, along with benchmark revisions adjusted for inflation and the price of oil, assuming that correlation is not causation, one can assume that this is cyclical and when the people realize that their personal income has actually increased, on a statistical basis, even though there is less of it, they will spend more later in the cycle of Holiday (not Christmas) Shopping. On a global basis commodities will cost more when there is less discretionary income.
A Free Market requires a captive audience.
/sarc/
One daughter got a new, used car.
One daughter got car repairs.
"Merry Christmas,
Times are hard.
Here's your fucking Xmas card!"
Running a real-time test of consumerism and my powers to tun sheeple back into thinking people.
GF has her eyes on a fridge at Home Despot for $298, marked down the past three weeks from around $349. I've already visited the store and spoken to a couple of clerks, offering them cash for a discount. No dice. I didn't talk to the manager, though. Saving that for later.
HD says the price will remain at $298 until Dec. 3 (they say the price will go back up. I'm convinced it will either stay the same or go lower.). I'm willing to wait. Convinced GF to wait, so plan for converting her back into a real person is working to some extent.
Now, if my hunch on consumerism is right, that it's fading, along with the general economy, that HD price will stay the same or even decline over the next three weeks, then really hit the skids after Christmas.
I'm seriously looking to pay $250 and knock off some of the 8% sales tax, and, OK, I'll haul it away (though I might hold out for free delivery if they insist on keeping the price high).
The game continues...
Without the housing bubble and granite countertops refi party, there is no hope for anything more than a Fed pumping rally that will eventually fizzle. Home appraisals are now back to fairy tale levels, but the lemmings cannot get loans. Watch for the Silicon Valley property bubble to burst and then like a tsunami sweep across the U.S. The Chinese buyers will bail and the Americans have no jobs, or only low-paying ones. The Fed wanted to inflate bubble two, but mostly failed. I see people walking away again and more homes sitting vacant. It is only a question of time…but bears know the Fed won’t just give up easily. More QE is a given if the housing market collapses, as it will take the equity bubble with it.
This is bad. Obama should appoint a shopping Czar.
greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he didnt exist
Deflation is likely just around the corner. I see it daily in my customer traffic and massive discounting by my suppliers. I am seeing price drops of 25% on very mainstream items.
From what I can tell, the consumer isn't "waiting" for anything. The consumer is either A.) Tapped out; B.) Working 24/7 just to stay afloat; C.) Sick and tired of being a "consumer" as opposed to a citizen; or maybe D.) Withdrawing.
I am sure there are many other answers but the traffic at my shops has never been slower in years. The only things busy in our area are the local pubs. That makes some sense I guess.
1 vote for withdrawing. I left the consumer market 5 years ago. I do mean left! Spending down from 70K annual to oooh, bout 6K. Left the "labor" market and the consumer society. I just love love love the mental picture of starving MIC and IRS agents. They can survive only by printing printing printing. Can't buy a decent pair of shoelaces off my stolen labor or shopping tax.
Many of the procalimed deals are not really that good. Free shipping on orders over $X.XX or just regular sale prices. I have not seen an ad yet that was worth my time and money to swallow the hook on.
When the stores really get desperate in January maybe the prices will be 'door buster' special.
What do you expect when inflation has tanked fiat paper.
Oh wait the powers that be says there is no inflation.
I guess when OPM buys your stuff you are sort'a blind to reality.
Edit note: OPM IS NOT "Ohio Precious Metals"
Better sample 5 million Twitter ghost accounts to verify these numbers...
Higher retail spending just means we're doubling down on the "waste" economy. So, maybe this reduced spending is good news...if people save a little more. Whom am I kidding?
The rotation of the Earth really fucked up shopping this year.
No demand
No demand
No demand
No demand
Deflation
Deflation
Deflation
Deflation
My quarterly one year projection.
But how else will I get a 40" idiot box for $115?
Television, the drug of the nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA