Our firm tracks monthly retail sales numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau and would like to provide our views to readers.
The following is the year-over-year retail sales growth rate from Sept. 2017 until Feb. 2019 by categories:
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Year-over-year Inventory turnover rate change by categories:
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
A couple of our observations:
Retail sales generally slowed down from the peak in August 2018 until recently in February 2019.
We think it has possibly been impacted by the Fed’s rate hike decision in 2018 and dragged down by the government