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Economists and investors have been on consumer-slump watch over the past couple of months.
Warnings signs included a slump in retail sales in June and Amazon’s CFO flagging “cautious consumers.” Analysts were bracing for a tough round of retail earnings after a slump in Home Depot’s comparable sales.
They may be feeling a lot better after Thursday.
Retail sales in July roared back by 1%, and even though much of the gain came from vehicle and gas station sales, increases were broad-based.
That followed a stronger-than-expected earnings report from retail behemoth Walmart (WMT). While CFO John David Rainey wasn’t exactly effusively sunny when he spoke with Yahoo Finance, he was measuredly optimistic.
“We've seen consistency with the consumer. If you look at each month of the second quarter, they were all fairly consistent. There was no step-down in July as some had expected. And that's generally our outlook for the year,” he said.
Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute, told Yahoo Finance that she sees consumer spending returning to normal (or new — but stable — normal) trends after the long pandemic disruption. The narrative “where we're settling now is one which hopefully will feel a little bit more balanced ... where you don't necessarily have as large of swings across the different sectors,” she said.
That doesn’t mean spending won’t be uneven month by month or that all income levels will be spending equally. A deep dive by Goldman Sachs strategists into company earnings calls found mixed sentiment on the consumer.
“Two common points of discussion that have also persisted this quarter relate to the affordability or value of a company’s offerings and the disparities between consumers in low vs. high-income cohorts,” wrote the team led by David Kostin.
As for how the environment will affect various retailers themselves, BMO Capital’s Simeon Siegel says there will be a lot more differentiation than in recent years.
"Despite what seems a clearly challenging environment, there are companies still winning, still seeing expanding revenues as they convince customers to buy what they have to sell," Siegel said. "Which makes it hard to blame top-down macro pressures when direct competitors are seeing directly opposing results."
And as 2024's earnings continue, Siegel expects these divergences to persist.
Julie Hyman is the co-anchor of Yahoo Finance Live, weekdays 9 a.m.-11 a.m. ET. Follow her on X @juleshyman, and read her other stories.
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