Retail Sales Preview: All In The Seasonal Adjustments

One month ago, when Bank of America's real-time card spending data indicated yet another poor retail sales report was on deck...

.... there was an unexpected surprise, because instead of the usual downbeat prints, the June retail sales unexpectedly beat expectations for both headline, core and control groups. Yet a closer look at the data revealed that this was just the usual seasonal adjustment chicanery, and as the chart below shows, unadjusted retail sales have been unchanged for almost three years running...