The Consumer - Gaining More Confidence

The consumer is gaining more and more confidence and it showed up in the retail sales report for January with a strong upward revision for December from up .6% to up 1%. January’s number rose .4% and every major retail sector reported higher sales, even the big box stores. If autos and gasoline were excluded the number would be up .7%. 

This certainly flushes out why the FED said yesterday that they may be increasing the fed funds rate in March. They find out about these numbers before we do. 

If this keeps up, GDP will pop up in the first quarter of 2017. The consumer is king in the U.S. making up 66% of our economy. From an economic point of view, things are looking up. Much of this is due to a new president focusing on the economy and the anticipation of him being able to come through on his promises. Just that possibility is producing higher confidence. Now we need to see if he actually can follow through on the promises and they actually work. 

For the time being, consumers and investors like what they are seeing and hearing.