Fed Gets Its Wish: Real-Time Card Data Shows Consumer Spending Craters After Start Of Bank Crisis

Regular readers are aware that over the years we have become big fans of real-time card (both credit and debit) spending data as tracked by one of the largest US banks, Bank of America, which makes "big data" observations on its massive card portfolio available to clients. After all, it was Bank of America's card data that allowed us to correctly predict that the February retail sales would be blowout (if one-time) number, multiples higher than consensus...

... and just days later, to also predict that the subsequent, February retail sales number would see a dramatic slump now that the bevy of one-time stimulus benefits had passed. We were right again.