March Retail Sales: Up 0.6% MoM, Better Than Forecast

The Census Bureau's Advance Retail Sales Report for March was released this morning. Headline sales came in at 0.6% month-over-month to one decimal and was above the investing.com consensus of 0.4%. Core sales (ex Autos) came in at 0.2% MoM. January and February figures were revised.

Here is the introduction from today's report:

Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for March 2018, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $494.6 billion, an increase of 0.6 percent (±0.5 percent) from the previous month, and 4.5 percent (±0.5 percent) above March 2017. Total sales for the January 2018 through March 2018 period were up 4.1 percent (±0.5 percent) from the same period a year ago. The January 2018 to February 2018 percent change was unrevised from down 0.1 percent (±0.2 percent)*.

Retail trade sales were up 0.6 percent (±0.5 percent) from February 2018, and 4.7 percent (±0.5 percent) above last year. Gasoline Stations were up 9.7 percent (±1.6 percent) from March 2017, while Nonstore Retailers were up 9.7 percent (±1.4 percent) from last year. [view full report]

The chart below is a log-scale snapshot of retail sales since the early 1990s. The two exponential regressions through the data help us to evaluate the long-term trend of this key economic indicator.