US Retail Monitoring Group
The main economic release for U.S. retailers arrives at the start of the week with the March retail sales report. The market is currently primarily focused on inflation and employment data, but retail sales should provide some insight into spending resilience.
The consensus expects an increase of 0.3%, 0.4% excluding automobiles and 0.3% in the control group. What might make this report difficult to predict is that Easter fell in March this year, which is difficult to account for seasonal variations.
Along with retail sales (8:30 a.m. ET, 12:30 p.m. GMT), we get sales from the Empire Fed and Canadian manufacturers. Then, 90 minutes later, we get the NAHB Housing Market Index and Business Inventories.
S&P 500 futures are up 24 points and I suspect the market would welcome a weak retail sales number. If so, we could see a sharp slowing of Friday’s 76-point drop, largely due to growing market expectations that Israel would limit its response to the weekend’s attacks.
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