Econoday Report: Redbook August 4, 2009

Redbook

Released on 8/4/2009 8:55:00 AM For wk8/1, 2009

	Prior	Actual
Store Sales Y/Y change	-5.5 %	-5.4 %

Highlights
Redbook continues to show extremely weak retail spending, down a year-on-year 5.4 percent for a 1.6 percent month-to-date drop vs. July. The report said the effect of summer state tax breaks, limited so far to a couple of states, will have a major effect for the back-to-school season, which is of course a major period for retailers.

Definition
A weekly measure of sales at chain stores, discounters, and department stores. It is a less consistent indicator of retail sales than the weekly ICSC index. It is also calculated differently than other indicators. For instance, figures for the first week of the month are compared with the average for the entire previous month. When two weeks are available, then these are compared with the average for the previous month, and so on. It might be more useful to compare year-over-year figures since these are indeed compared to the comparable week a year ago. This index is correlated with the general merchandise portion of retail sales covering only about 10 percent of total retail sales. Why Investors Care