Shhh... Recession forgot to tell retailers it is here...

Home Depot posts worst revenue miss in about 20 years, lowers forecast as consumers delay big projects

New And Used Cars Becoming Increasingly Unaffordable As The Average Vehicle Age Hits A Record 27fec8d94I've
Last month, the average new vehicle sold for $47,713, according to Edmunds.com, which is a full third more than it was five years ago when the typical ride went for just $35,794 and there was a generous selection of reasonably priced models on the market. Half of all full-size trucks, 70% of midsize luxury SUVs, and 94% of large SUVs are now selling for over $60,000. Five years ago, those percentages stood at 5%, 31%, and 54%, respectively.

Inflation drives dog food prices to record highs, study finds

Food Price Outlook | The report "Food Price Outlook" shows that the

 

Hard to wrap my head around that

 

OP is talking about sales increases. You posted an article about one company as if they make up the entire retail market and other articles about price increases.

Strange

 

There are more than just a few companies seeing slowing sales.
Did you miss the big layoffs in tech recently.
Amazon for one laid off about 18,000 workers.

The idea that everything is great is just as wrong as the one that everything is bad.

 

Of course retail sales are up. If inflation is 5% and the raw sale of goods actually decrease by 2-3% (in terms of sku’s sold), won’t sales still be recorded as having increased?.

2022 sales 1,000,000 units at $10/unit = $10,000,000
2023 sales 975,000 units at $10.50/unit =$10,237,500

Were sales down 2.5% or up 2.38%?

 

No one is saying everything is great, but sales in the largest industries increased and beat expectations. That is good news that everyone should be celebrating

 

Home Depot is considered a bellwether for home improvement and construction (duh), so normally it’s pretty important.

Problem with analyzing home depot is they’ve been going gangbusters since the pandemic. A lot of noise in any of their comps due to the stay at home trade during pandemic, then that crazy construction/RE spike and product shortages that came last year. Pretty hard to really take anything from their last 3 years as the type of economic bellwether it would normally be - too much noise in the data and strange contrarian stuff. If you asked me about real estate in general terms in early 2021 I would have have guessed OBVIOUS declines due to 1 million+ excess deaths (and thus vacancies/estate sales driving pricing down along with the rest of the economy). But in hindsight that was overly simplistic analysis and didn’t account for phenomenons like stay at home trade and supply chain constraints.

 

It's not so black and white. This is reported on a monthly basis and the CPI don't increase by 5% in one month. Sales were actually down last month

 

I know, that’s why my illustration used a full year and not a single month.

 

My point is that when inflation is running 150-200% of retail sales growth over a defined period of time, like a calendar year, retail sales will appear to have increased even when though people are actually buying fewer goods than they did the year before. (unless the measure of gross sales is inflation adjusted).

 

Agree, the record profits go all through the supply chain from the manufacturer on up to the retailer including suppliers of components and raw materials.

 

That’s why tracking units sold is more important given the spike in prices across pretty much all areas.

 

Corporations are very good at making profits. Regardless of borrowing costs, employment costs, etc. Not shocking that earnings haven’t crumbed as many expected. These rate increases aren’t hurting anyone but the average everyday consumer.