Turns Out Retail Sales Data is Not Invincible

Apart from CPI and NFP there are only a handful of other reports that truly deserve to be considered supporting actors in the current bond market drama.  Retail Sales is one of them.  The report has generally been a thorn in the bond market's side over the past year as it has shown a surprisingly resilient consumer in the face of higher rates. That's why there was some concern among some bond watchers over today's forecast of -0.1.  Was this some sort of set-up?  Surely, a consistently stronger data series can do better than -0.1. But it turns out economists were on to something when they agreed on the negative print.  In fact, they could have been a whole lot more negative and still undershot the actual result: -0.8.  


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