VCR News and Press, Vanguard Consumer Discretion From 08/20/21

Could the Fed begin paring back asset purchases soon? U.S. July retail sales tick lower. Are consumers still in good shape? 3 key risks to China’s economic outlook. For further details see: Almost Time To Taper? What The Latest Fed Meeting Minutes Reveal

The Wall Street Journal announced that Amazon plans to open “Large Retail Locations Akin to Department Stores”. This news comes at the heels of the latest e-commerce report from the Census Bureau posting record sales of $225 billion in the second quarter of 2021. Dep...

A dashboard with metrics in consumer cyclical subsectors. Value and quality scores, and their evolution since last month. VCR fast facts. A list of cheap stocks. For further details see: VCR: Consumer Discretionary Dashboard For August

Friday, it was news that US consumer confidence fell 13% from July into August to 70.2 (vs 81.3 expected), the lowest since 2011. Yesterday, it was news that US retail sales for July - purchases at stores, restaurants and online - fell 1.1% compared with June. Today, we learn that...

There is one critical problem for supposing the ever-so-slight calm in inflation mean anything. The Fed’s own argument of the “base effect” now works against it. One of the Fed’s biggest excuses for claiming inflation would be transitory was that most of it...

The chip problem is holding back what is already a monstrously robust (if artificial) sales environment in the auto sector. While the entire retail sector grapples with supply and supply chain issues, outside the automotive segment the rest of it has been far more successful mitigatin...

My reading of the current environment is relatively clear; both the longer term and shorter-term leading growth indicators are pointing toward the heightened possibility of slowing cyclical growth. As a result, these downward trends suggest investors ought to be rotating out of the re...

Retail sales fell by 1.1% in July from June, as reported by the Census Bureau, with drops in sales reported across a wide variety of merchandise categories. While the contraction in retail sales was much larger than investors anticipated, we might have expected consumers to pull back ...

Retail sales and food-services spending fell 1.1% in July, the second drop in the last three months. Core retail sales, which exclude motor vehicle dealers and gasoline retailers, posted a 0.7% decline for the month, leaving that measure with a -0.1% annualized growth rate but a 13.8%...

The S&P 500 dropped 0.70% on Tuesday’s trading session, its worst single-day performance in a month. The selloff brought down with it some of the largest market-tracking exchange traded funds. SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY), iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (N...