US retail sales miss forecasts in December
US retail sales rose sharply at the end of 2016, led by strong demand for big-ticket automobiles but nonetheless fell short of forecasts as improved consumer confidence failed to translate into increased spending at the till.
Seasonally adjusted, retail sales volumes jumped 0.6% month-on-month to reach $469.1bn (consensus: 0.7%), slightly undershooting the consensus forecast for a rise of 0.7%.
In comparison to a year ago, retail sales were ahead by 4.1%.
Sales excluding automobiles were much weaker than anticipated, edging higher by just 0.2% on the month (consensus: 0.5%).
Whereas autombile sales climbed by 2.4% in comparison with November, non-auto sales such as for electronics or food saw declines of 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively.
"Even so, our measure of core sales, which excludes autos, gasoline, food and building materials, was unchanged, the weakest performance since July
"These data are subject to potentially large revisions but on the face of it, they indicate that the surge in consumers' confidence since the election has not yet translated into spending. This might be nothing more than a question of lags, but we wonder if the consumer confidence surveys do a relatively poor job of capturing the response to the election of young people, especially minorities, who voted heavily for Clinton. It's hard to explain why headline confidence has jumped so much given that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by 3.0m," commented Ian Sheperdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.