Merrill: "Retail spending stalls again"

A few excerpts from a Merrill Lynch research note: Retail spending stalls again According to BAC aggregated credit and debit card data, retail sales ex-autos declined 0.1% mom seasonally adjusted in April. This suggests that the better momentum in consumer spending seen in March failed to carry over to start the second quarter. We saw two headwinds for the consumer in April: weather and higher gasoline prices. We find evidence that unseasonably cold weather conditions likely played a role in holding back consumer activity. Specifically, the Midwest and the Northeast experienced below average......(read more)

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