Many U.S. retailers posted smaller-than-expected sales declines for March in a sign that shoppers may be regaining confidence to open their wallets after more than a year of recession.
Of the two dozen or so retailers that have reported March sales at stores open at least a year, more than half topped Wall Street estimates, and a handful even raised their quarterly earnings outlooks on Thursday.
"The numbers are still soft, but given the deluge of negative news we have seen in the retail space over the last several months, it's got to be somewhat encouraging," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics Inc. "It looks like there is a little bit of an uptick, some pent-up demand ... for some discretionary spending."
Yet Perkins cautioned against reading too much into the results. "It is difficult to foresee that really rallying and spiking in the near term," he said.
The International Council of Shopping Centers said it expected overall U.S. same-store sales to rise 1 percent to 2 percent in April and be flat to up 1 percent in May.
There's an awful lot of "because the number wasn't as bad as we thought it was it's actually a good number" analysis going on right now. That's just not good analysis. Personally, I think we should phrase it like this: "the data indicates that the decline in retail sales is decreasing" or something to the like. Consider the following chart of real (inflation-adjusted) retail sales:
Click for a larger image
The bottom line is sales have taken a major nose dive over the last year. The reality is maybe sales are stabilizing. Maybe....
