Today’s retail sales release has us scratching our heads.
The posted number showed strong retail sales for the month of June (ex-autos) with the control group indicating +0.9% MoM gains (the control group feeds into GDP data).
If one scrolled lower in the report, they would notice that those figures were seasonally adjusted.
The non-seasonally adjusted number showed a whopping nearly 6% decline MoM for retail sales ex-autos, tying the largest drop ever since the inception of the index.
Where lies the truth on the state of the consumer….?