Retail sales for October were released this morning and as expected they weren't pretty. In fact, they were as bad as they have ever been. The chart below compares year over year retail sales adjusted for inflation and compares it to the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary sector. October's 8.6% decline represented the eleventh straight month where sales declined compared to year ago levels. The increasing pace of declines is even more concerning though. In June, the inflation adjusted decline was less than 1%. Since then, the decline has increased every month to reach October's level of -8.6%.
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