Go figure. According to the good folks at Wall St Cheat Sheet despite waning consumer confidence and a heap of negative economic data, some top U.S. retailers have already reported better-than-expected August sales. Thomson Reuters tracks 25 retailers, with 19 reporting so far today, of which 11 beat expectations while a total of 15 reported an increase in sales, though for 4 of them, the increase was below what had been expected.
Late Wednesday, Costco reported an 11% rise in sales for the month of August, beating Reuters’ expectations of a 9.3% increase. The warehouse club and discount retailer benefited from “an upper middle-income consumer continuing to be fully engaged in the process of saving where applicable,” said Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi.
With August being the peak of back-to-school shopping, the second-most important shopping period in the year after the year-end holiday season, weak economic indicators and the threat of Hurricane Irene looked as though they might dampen sales. But despite store closings all along the East Coast this past weekend, sales held up, offering hope that if sales can keep up in August despite the S&P downgrade, a huge market sell-off, and extremely low consumer confidence, they just might be the one positive trend to be counted on. June and July both reported better-than-expected sales as well….
Read more at http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/retail-sales-climbed-in-august-despite-hurricane-irene-and-low-consumer-confidence.html/
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