Car-Buying Surge Sparks Best Retail Sales Rise Since April

It's a holiday miracle: give the worst creditors access to cheap money for longer-and-longer terms and hey presto, ‘expensive' stuff is available to everyone. Retail sales modestly beat expectations in November (+0.7% vs +0.6% expectations) despite the NRF previously reporting the worst extended Thanksgiving shopping weekend since Lehman which surely got lost in the Arima-X-12 seasonal adjustments – sending USD/JPY spiking to confirm what great news this is. What was the great news? A 0.1% beat of the key ex-autos and gas category, which increased 0.6% in November, vs Expectations of 0.5%, and a decline from the upward revised 0.7% in October.

The other prints:

Retail sales: 0.7%, Exp. 0.4%, Last 0.5%

Retail sales ex auto 0.5%, exp. 0.1%, last 0.4%

Retail Sales ex autos and gas 0.6%, exp. 0.5%, last 0.5%

The driver of all this exuberance: Vehicle sales which surged once again +1.7% MoM courtesy of an overabundance of subprime loans. Oddly, for all those prognosticators looking for windfall tax cuts from the oil price plunge, gasoline station sales dropped only 0.8% MoM, well less than expectations and not exactly the consumption-boosting exuberance every talking head proclaims. These numbers appear to be clearly in the “Fed wants to hike” narrative.

The breakdown below shows that spending declined in just two categories: gas stations and miscellaneous store retailers. Don't tell the retailers that spending across all categories surged in November. One can't wait to see the margin collapse as this (alleged) liquidation resulted in: