Redbook Retail Index Plunges Again

In what is surely a shocking turn for the Mainstream Media, Tuesday's horrendous Johnson Redbook Index numbers were curiously not noted anywhere. As Zero Hedge believes in not depriving its audience of data points, especially those lacking a green steroid shot, the charts below indicate just much of a lack to the US budget deficit, upcoming consumer subsidies will be for President Obama (and taxpayers).

By way of background:

The Johnson Redbook Index is a sales-weighted year-over-year same-store sales growth in a sample of large US general merchandise retailers representing about 9,000 stores. Same-store sales are sales in stores continuously open for 12 months or longer. By dollar value, the index represents over 80% of the equivalent 'official' retail sales series collected and published by the US Department of Commerce. Redbook compiles the index by collecting and interpreting performance estimates from retailers. The index and its sub-groups are sales-weighted aggregates of these estimates. Weeks are retail weeks (Sunday to Saturday), and equally weighted within the month. Months are retail fiscal months on the National Retail Federation's 4-5-4 calendar, and may start and end on different days than equivalent calendar months. As of June 2009 Wal Mart will no longer be included in the retail sample for this index.

Alas, nothing here to incite a Breaking News banner on CNBC.

Comments

[Carl Spackler]

Until retail sales start to rise, this market and the economy will only go down. You can believe all the the consumer confidence data points you want, but all they are doing is reflecting higher stock market prices. This market will go down as one big Obama cheerleading session (and headfake) unless retail sales start to rise. Without an increase in sales, there is no increase in employment. Corporations will merely shed more jobs late in the summer.

2009 Jun 23 05:20 PM

[Trading Alpha]

Tyler

I agree with your overall views as you will see from my articles. On the Redbook numbers, it seems from the below story that this drop has more to do with the exclusion of Walmart from the results. Still a bad data point for the economy but if Walmart is up 2 -3% and the rest of the retailers are down 4% it put things in perspective. Keep up the good work.

***

Redbook: US Retail Sales -4.4% First 3 Weeks June Vs May

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--National chain store sales fell 4.4% in the first three weeks of June versus the previous month, according to Redbook Research's latest indicator of national retail sales released Tuesday.

The latest numbers are starkly different from recent weeks because they don't include Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which said last month it would no longer provide monthly sales figures.

The fall in the index was compared to a targeted 4.1% drop.

The Johnson Redbook Index also showed seasonally adjusted sales in the period were down 4.5% compared with June 2008, against a targeted 4.2% fall.

Redbook said that on an unadjusted basis, sales in the week ended Saturday were down 4.2% from a year ago after a 4.8% decline the prior week.

The group said sales for the week were helped by Father's Day promotions, and retailers said traffic picked up toward the end of the week approaching Father's Day. Men's apparel and other gift categories such as tools, grills and coolers were active.

Redbook said business is expected to be slightly better in the remainder of June because of warmer weather and the Independence Day holiday falling on a weekend.

-By Kerry E. Grace, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5089; [e-mail]

2009 Jun 23 05:45 PM

[Ali Mogharabi]

I'm assuming they appropriately adjusted the index and have taken WMT sales figures out of their historical data, correct? If not, then of course this index means nothing.

2009 Jun 23 08:06 PM

[cameroni]

The big question to me is why Walmart would suddenly stop releasing weekly and monthly figures. Are sales there down by a similar amount,..are they down by more? Could we be in for a Walmart surprise with next quarterly results. The question begs an answer because so much of Walmart's inventory is sourced in China and we know there are supply issues developing there with plant closures due to the global slowdown.

2009 Jun 23 08:43 PM

[Griller]

Yes, why would Walmart suddenly stop releasing weekly and monthly figures? Could it be their sales are down and the stock value of Walmart is collapsing too? Either way, you know it is not to their advantage. Management has 1) increased long term debt, 2) raised the dividend, and 3) initiated buybacks. Sounds defensive.
Re: "Still a bad data point for the economy but if Walmart is up 2 -3% and the rest of the retailers are down 4% it put things in perspective. " Walmart is 10% of US retail sales so if Walmart's sales are up 2-3% while the retailers overall are down 4% the perspective barely shifts. Growth, profitability, and value are all down. See GCFR reports at financial-gauges.com/2...

2009 Jun 23 10:09 PM

[Moon Kil Woong]

CNBC is the last place you can turn to for real facts. It is puzzling that no one discusses this terrible data point or perhaps it's not considering so many of them are stuck shooting themselves in the foot over green shoot theories.

2009 Jun 24 12:16 AM

[Hillsfar]

With unemployment benefits exhaustion rates in the rough 40% zone now, even the unemployed will have a hard time contributing even the amounts they were contributing to retail sales.

2009 Jun 24 02:34 AM

[dcb]

By now it should be clear to everyone that the Obama administration has taken a play from the Bush administration and is engaging in a full court press of media manipulation, and in constant campaign mode. You could not have had more proof of that then yesterday Obama praising Bernanke. Or perhaps Obama going to the public to push for a regulatory reform that could have been crafted to give the industry almost everything their heart could desire. It is exactly what one would script and predict.

Any thoughts of the Fed being a systemic regulator. Just the idea makes me crazy. Give a branch of government (independent) and controlled by private bankers the role of systemic regulation.
Considering their track record the fact that is it even up for debate just shows you how rigged the system must be.

Each and every day the agent of change (Obama) show his true colors that he has in fact been chosen by the elites to represent change and keep things the same. The shame is that it too the American people 6 years to catch on to the snow job Bush was pulling, but by then it will be too late.

Clearly the long term plan is to cause inflation and sink the dollar despite what our government says. Bailing out insolvent banks, keeping banker's bonus structure, and ruining the economy. A never ending subsidy via the printing press and the yield curve that destroys the saving of millions, and a federal reserve that is leveraged as much as the worst wall street investment bank. Only this time when things go south the bankers keep their bonus and the currency collapses.

In 1979 I ran over through the Shah and ushered in a new era of government. We got rid of carter and had our own "Reagan" revolution. After 30 years the results are the same. 30 years of declining wages, and destruction of the middle class. 30 years of failure is enough for them, when we we realize our own government is doing the exact same thing to us. We both have rigged systems, and fraudulent elections. In ours the faces change, but that is about the only difference.

2009 Jun 24 08:40 AM

[TeresaE]

WalMart is no longer reporting because they don't want us to SEE THAT THEY ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THE FAILURE OF AMERICA.

When WalMart sales go up, it means American jobs disappear and our misery index rises. Broke people shop at WalMart.

They don't want us to know how much they are profiting on our misery, at least on a weekly/monthly basis.

And China is just fine. Their own middle class is already larger than our entire population and growing. They will soon be using nearly everything they produce.

Care to guess what that means for our costs to survive?

2009 Jun 24 09:10 AM

[Dave Dorgan]

Once again - good find.
It's my belief that we have reached the point where those that, for some period of time, had money to take advantage of the huge sale opportunities are now tightening their belts.

2009 Jun 24 02:11 PM

[Ali Mogharabi]

Just fyi, regarding the WMT data and its impact on the validity of these studies going forward ... I contacted Redbook and unfortunately below is what they said:

----
As of June 2009, Wal-Mart is no longer included in our retail sample. The data can get very noisy if we try to keep up with all store revisions. For the time being, we have decided not to revise the historical weekly data. Our sales data is not adjusted for the exclusion of Wal-Mart on a yoy basis.

Best,
Catlin Levis
(admin@redbookresearch...
----------------------...

2009 Jun 25 03:59 AM