Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Retail sales
The Dow Jones Industrial Average feel by more than 600 700 points today, allegedly because American retail sales in September declined. Huh? Of course retail sales declined in September. I am amazed it was as little as 1.2%. The question is, who were these "analysts" who expected a drop of only 0.7%?
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Oct 15, 04:39:00 PM:
That wasn't the reason, and anybody with half a brain knows it.
By 
All-Mi-T [Thought Crime] Rawdawgbuffalo, at
Wed Oct 15, 05:43:00 PM:
I gues Mayer Amschel Rothschild was right “Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.”
deposits and despots.
By , at
Wed Oct 15, 06:05:00 PM:
September retail is an important indicator because parents buy a lot of clothing and school supplies.
But any analyst who thought sales wouldn't fall by over 1% must have been crazy.
I went to a thrift store (used goods) yesterday. It was packed. Parents were buying cheap costumes for Halloween at about half the price of the nearby Walmart.
The market is utterly mad. General Electric is off by 50% from last year but it's profit went down only a little.
I think the GE decline is a proxy for investor outlook. The company is so big, in so many industries and countries, that investors figure it must be in trouble.
