Retail Sales and Producer Prices Show No Inflation

The U.S. Census Bureau announced on Wednesday that its advance estimates of U.S. retail sales for September was up a mere 0.1% sequentially to $447.7 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis. That reading was shown to be up by 2.4% from a year ago.

Retail trade sales in September were virtually unchanged from August 2015, but they were up by 1.7% from a year ago. Motor vehicle and parts dealers were up 8.8% from last year, and food services and drinking places retail sales were up 7.9% from a year earlier.

And for the deflationary report: The U.S. Department of Labor released its PPI for final demand for the month of September. The headline PPI was -0.5% on a sequential basis, and it was down by 1.1% on an annualized basis. The core-PPI, excluding food and energy, was down by 0.3% in September from the prior month, but it was up by 0.8% from a year earlier.

Those inflationary readings are just going to look bad for a while longer when you consider the trickle-down (and the trickle-up) impact of oil and energy prices affecting so many products due to the cost of production and the cost of transporting those goods around the nation.

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