Today's report on advance sales for retails trade and food services for February elicited this commentary, appearing in FXSTREET.com:
"The retail sales figures are far from weak," said Steve Stanley, chief economist for RBS Greenwich.
That doesn't exactly sound like a call for dancing in the street, but the report really wasn't bad. Some details (via Bloomberg):
U.S. retail sales increased in February for a third month as consumers bought more from department stores, auto dealers and electronics outlets.
The 0.5 percent rise to $352.1 billion followed a revised 0.3 percent gain in January, initially estimated as a decline, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Excluding automobiles, sales rose 0.4 percent after a 1 percent surge.
The best news was probably the broad-based nature of the advances:
Retail sales rose in 11 of the 13 categories tracked by the Commerce Department. The gains were paced by increases for auto dealers, department stores, and furniture and electronics stores. The only categories not to register gains were building materials, which dropped 1.3 percent, and non-store retailers, which were unchanged and include online and catalog sales.
In other words:
"We are doing pretty darn good. It's pretty well spread. Consumers are spending their little hearts out," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services in New York.
That quote was from this Reuters article, which also includes the following news:
A separate report by the Treasury Department showed net capital inflows surged to a larger-than-expected $91.5 billion in January, the second biggest inflow on record and more than enough to finance the nation's current account deficit.
"Clearly, the U.S. is still seen as an attractive place to invest, despite the concerns over the dollar," said Sherry Cooper, chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
This post notes one view of how the retail sales and capital flow news might be related.
UPDATE: I also noticed this New York Times article, highlighted Barry Ritholtz, regarding the capital inflow report. Barry picks out the meat:
The troubling news was that 41 percent of the buying came from Caribbean countries, with much of that from hedge funds based there. The funds could easily reverse their positions and sharply lower the flow of money into the United States in the months ahead.
This possibility appeared to have been partly responsible for the drop in Treasury prices yesterday and the rise in yields. The dollar also slipped against the yen, falling to 104.45, from 104.93 Monday.
Another surprise in the Treasury Department data was that American purchases of foreign stocks and bonds nearly ground to a halt. Because the purchases are counted as an outflow, the slowdown was the other reason net inflows were so big. Like hedge fund flows, this trend could also reverse quickly.