Doug Short: The Advance Retail Sales Report released this morning shows that sales in March rose 1.1% month-over-month, up from 0.7% in February, which was upwardly revised from 0.3%. Core Retail Sales (ex Autos) was up 0.7% in March following an unrevised 0.3% in February.
Today’s headline and core numbers came above the Investing.com forecasts, which were 0.8% for Headline and 0.5% for Core.
The first chart below is a log-scale snapshot of retail sales since the early 1990s. I’ve included an inset to show the trend in this indicator over the past several months.
Here is the Core version, which excludes autos.
Here is a year-over-year snapshot of overall series.