US Consumer Spending: Record holiday sales tell market bears to get real
Posted November 25, 2007
“Apparently, American consumers haven’t quite heard the message that they’re supposed to be out of cash. And it seems “credit crunch” hasn’t trickled down to the mainstream either. There was more plastic out at any given cash register than was used in Cher’s facial architecture.” — J. Christoph Amberger
by J. Christoph Amberger, TFN
Baltimore — (TFN): It’s official. Financial analysts and American investment newsletter editors are completely out of touch with mainstream America. They would do their clients and subscribers a favor not writing about the Demise of the Dollar for a single day… and instead spend an afternoon playing hookey. Do some good, old-fashioned research outside of the narrow horizon corsets of their offices and go where actual people live, talk, and shop.
Because if you needed to head out for five pounds of sugar on Wednesday night (like I had to — cranberry sauce, you know…) you saw the parking lots in front of supermarkets parked shut. People spending money. If you headed out to pick up your dry-cleaning last Friday, you’d have had a chance to chat with your Korean shopkeeper about how slow business was due to everyone being at the mall — just like last year and the year before. People spending money. And if you realized that the boys urgently needed haircuts on Saturday, you’d have been as hard pressed as I to find parking at the choked-up mall garage.
Because, screw those home-made Kwaanza gifts, people were spending money all over the place!
US Consumer spending is alive and well, thank you very much!
Apparently, Americans haven’t quite heard the message that they’re supposed to be out of cash. And it seems that the notion of “credit crunch” hasn’t trickled down to the mainstream, either. There was more plastic out at any given cash register than was used in Cher’s facial architecture.
Americans overspending on Christmas gifts… who’d have thunk!
Black Friday, America’s ritual reenactment of the Pilgrims’ shopping spree at the Plymouth Rock shopping plaza, rang up $10.3 billion on holiday purchases. That’s an 8.3 percent increase over last year. Eight point three percent! No matter oil prices rising and the higher cost of gold.
And that’s just the brick-and-mortar stores. Internet shopping won’t take off — also from record levels — until tomorrow!
The Friday after Thanksgiving typically accounts for up to 5 percent of total holiday sales. Which means we will see holiday sales of more than $210 billion dollars in the next four weeks.
Doom and gloomers with eggnog on their face on consumer spending… again
And still, the analysts are whining! They anticipate that sales will increase by “only” 3.6 percent this year — after a 4.8 percent gain last year. What a terrible decrease. Oh, the humanity! (”Buy gold!”)
Apparently, they are arithmetically challenged. Because the lower growth rate means that the absulute sales record of 2006 will be matched… and is being exceeded at a minimum 3.6% growth rate.
But that, like the ritual whining of analysts and perma bear editors, is as much a part of the holiday season as fruitcake and the Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Christmas Special. If you’ve been alive and awake over the past decades and don’t suffer from selective memory or premature-onset Alzheimer’s you will remember that it’s been like that almost every year. Even in 2001.
And you will do the same when you hear the ritualistic chants of the newsletter gurus as I do with the Chipmunks: Switch channels.
***Read Bloomberg.com’s story on that here: U.S. Sales Rose 8.3% Day After Thanksgiving, ShopperTrak Says
***Don’t forget to watch this weekend’s Smart Trading Action Alert: Smart Trading Action Alert: Given the beating some blue chips have taken in recent weeks, select small-cap stocks now provide opportunities for safe profits. Ian Cooper explains.
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