- We got a lot of economic data released today, most of it bad, and most of it worse than expected
- What I did not expect was that the market shrugged it off
- Initially, there was a little reaction; gold jumped $3 but it never gained momentum and it rolled over to -$10 at the time of this recording
- The dollar index, which had moved into negative territory immediately following the release, quickly recovered back to positive territory
- It’s still early in the day, as I’m recording, so this could change as some of this economic data has a chance to sink in
- I noticed that the Atlanta Fed just reduced its Q3 GDP estimate from 3.3 to 3%
- That’ the second reduction in a row
- This is the lowest estimate the Atlanta Fed has had in about 2 months, although it is still pretty high
- Let’s go over the data we got today:
- Retail Sales was one of the more significant numbers; everybody looks to retail sales to judge the health of the consumer
- Last month’s number, relatively weak, it was flat, and they were looking for another flat month, but we were -.3% for August
- It gets worse from there – less autos, they revised the prior month from -.3 to -.4 and in August they were looking for +.3, they got -.1
- Less autos and gasoline, we were down last month .1%; they were looking for +.4% and we’re down another .1%
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