It\u2019s a big morning for economic data this Friday, with U.S. Retail Sales and Import\/Export Prices for July and Empire State manufacturing for August. Pre-market futures have not moved much on the news \u2014 the Dow is +270 points, the S&P 500 is +8 and the Nasdaq -20 points \u2014 but bond yields have moved around a bit, first ticking up 2 points on the 10-year and 2-year, and now down two basis points (bps).<\/p>\n
Retail Sales In-Line, Off Hotter Revisions<\/p>\n
U.S. Retail Sales<\/strong> last month came in as expected at +0.5%, cooler than a more heated +0.9% in June, which was revised up 30 bps to +0.9%, the second-highest level of the year. Subtracting auto sales for July, we were in-line with estimates at +0.3%, down half a full point from the upwardly revised +0.8% the previous month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ex-autos and gas, we ratchet down further: +0.2%, the lightest we\u2019ve seen since May, again off an upwardly revised +0.8% from June. The Control print (core Retail Sales, which finds its way into prominence in other economic data like Personal Consumption Expenditures [PCE]) was also +0.5% for July, down from the 30-bps upward revision in June to +0.8%.<\/p>\n Imports Heating Up, Exports Cooling Off<\/p>\n July Import Prices<\/strong> jumped much higher than expected to +0.4% from a consensus estimate of 0.0%. This follows a downward revision from the prior month: to -0.1% from +0.1% reported a month ago. This +0.4% print is the hottest level since April 2024. Subtracting fuel prices, +0.3% is the figure, up from the downwardly revised -0.2% from June. Year over year, we\u2019re now three-straight months at -0.2%.<\/p>\n Exports<\/strong> for July went the opposite direction: +0.1%, from +0.5% reported for June. Year over year, Exports are down to +2.2% from +2.6% from the month-ago report. Generally speaking, this is a suboptimal position on trade: paying more for Imports while getting less for Exports. Then again, one month\u2019s worth of data does not a trend make.<\/p>\n The bigger question is that which is asked while looking through the prism of tariffs: who\u2019s paying them? If Import Prices are going up, this is a signal that U.S. trading partners are not absorbing tariff costs \u2014 otherwise this metric would be trending down, not up. Again, we won\u2019t make too much of July trade data, but we should be paying attention to these numbers closely as time unfolds.<\/p>\n Empire State Numbers Higher than Expected<\/p>\n The monthly manufacturing report for New York State \u2014 the Empire State Index<\/strong> \u2014 came in higher than expected at 11.9, which is the second highest month since November of last year. It\u2019s also the second-straight positive Empire State number after four straight months in the negative. This is regional data on the goods-producing side, but just like trade data, it\u2019s worth keeping an eye on as our economy continues to transition.<\/p>\n What to Expect from the Stock Market Going Forward<\/p>\n The S&P 500 looks to keep its winning streak alive, establishing new record closing highs for the majority of the week so far. There is more econ data coming out 15 minutes before and a half hour after today\u2019s opening bell, which is worth considering as well. Next week brings us a number of housing data reports and, later in the week, the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, where all eyes will be on Fed Chair Jerome Powell as he discusses potential rate cuts at the Fed\u2019s September meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a big morning for economic data this Friday, with U.S. Retail Sales and Import\/Export Prices for July…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":148322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,18217,6764,4313,268,18213,135,18215,18216,18214,18218,18219,9580,2437,18220,8727,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-148321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-financial","10":"tag-financial-planning","11":"tag-investing","12":"tag-investment","13":"tag-investment-advice","14":"tag-markets","15":"tag-online-investment","16":"tag-online-stock-trading","17":"tag-online-trading","18":"tag-quote","19":"tag-quotes","20":"tag-stock","21":"tag-stock-market","22":"tag-stock-quotes","23":"tag-stocks","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}