A MISS ON RETAIL SALES

This isn’t good

“The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for March, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $389.3 billion, an increase of 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, and 7.1 percent (±0.7%) above March 2010. Total sales for the January through March 2011 period were up 8.1 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The January to February 2011 percent change was revised from +1.0 percent (±0.5%) to +1.1 percent (±0.2%).”

“Gasoline stations sales were up 16.7 percent (±1.7%) from March 2010.”

This confirms that the economy in Q1 slowed down materially toward the end, and was certainly not as had been predicted early in 2011.