US Retail Sales Soared In July On Record Amazon Prime Day
"Prepare for a big beat" was the message from BofA's sage-like forecasters for this morning's retail sales print....
And sure enough they were right as July retail sales rose 0.7% MoM (beating the 0.4% jump expected) -the best monthly jump since Jan
Source: Bloomberg
Under the hood, everything was green except
Motor Vehicles and Parts Dealers: -0.3%
Furniture and home furnishings -1.8%
Electronics and appliance stores -1.3%
Non-store retailers soared - with some suggesting this was Amazon's record sales on Prime Day (which means assume a sequential decline in this category in August)...
On a YoY basis, headline and core retail sales accelerated...
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, we note that the control group - which is used in the GDP calculation - soared 1.0% MoM (more than double the expected 0.4% MoM rise).
Source: Bloomberg
Goldman boosted their Q3 GDP tracking estimate by seven tenths to +2.2% (qoq ar) and their domestic final sales growth forecast by eight tenths to +2.1%. They left their past-quarter GDP tracking estimate for Q2 unchanged after rounding at +2.6% (qoq ar), compared to +2.4% as originally reported.
One last thing, all of this data is completely divergent from the collapse in retail sales seen by Redbook data...
Source: Bloomberg
We wonder who's right...
Source: Bloomberg
Bear in mind that all of these numbers are nominal.
