What to Expect From US Retail Sales Data This Week?

There have been a lot of headlines about how much more expensive Christmas will be this year. It seems that despite President Biden’s comments last week, that CEOs have promised him store shelves will be full for the holiday season, Americans are taking precautions. Retailers have been reporting already for months that people are choosing to get their purchases done early in case stock runs out.

It’s just under 2 weeks until Black Friday, which is usually a strong gauge of how the holiday season spending is likely to be. But this year it seems we may already have a sign of that much earlier.

US retail sales data comes out tomorrow (Tuesday) and it’s likely to show a very strong October. Estimates from a Refinitiv poll showed expectations of a 1.4% monthly rise in October, which is up from the 0.7% rise in September.

The National Retail Federation has forecasted that sales in the holiday season will be at a record high, with a year on year rise of 8.5–10.5%. That would be huge, especially considering the rise was already 8.2% last year.

This is despite the fact that the Michigan Consumer Sentiment data showed a big…