Hello Traderade family,
I hope you're all having a good weekend. As we head into the end of the year, we thought this might be a good time to check in on the health of the consumer.
We just saw multiple reports over the past week that said consumers spent a record amount for holiday shopping. CNBC quoted $9B for Black Friday and I put out this chart on Twitter that showed record amount from the Adobe Survey for all three shopping days.
But, remember not everything is as it seems. These numbers are not adjusted for inflation and with that adjustment, spending actually comes down to around -5% from 2021 levels.
And this is no surprise.
We continually keep hearing that the US consumer is strong. But, the data keeps telling us otherwise. With the Personal Savings numbers hot off the press, this is a good time to look at what the data is actually telling us.