Retail Sales are Up?

Let me start this off by saying that last night was a long freaking night.

Not only did I get caught up in the excitement of Obama destroying Hillary in the Potomac primaries, but I also got caught up looking for a place to go camping this weekend.

Of course, all the good sites were already booked. So I resorted to camping in the everglades. My mission is to wrestle an alligator and see if it can make any marks in my metal armored bear suite (strengthened with nano-technology).

By the time I was done with all of that, it was two in the morning. So I go lay down. And right as I start drifting off into the land of fantastic dreams, my power goes out. Not only that, but my intrusion alarm starts alerting me that the power is out – for HALF AN HOUR!

My girlfriend had to stop me from smashing the thing with a hammer.

After all was said and done, it was around three in the morning by the time I was able to sleep. So right now, the only reason I’m awake is due to heavily caffeinated Dunkin Donuts coffee.

Walking into the office today was also a shocker. I saw Market watch report that retail sales were up 0.3% in January. The market promptly celebrated by pushing the Dow Jones up 100 points.

On the face of it, an increase in retail sales is a good thing. But when you dig deeper, you find that this report is actually bad. You see, the reason why retail sales weren’t flat was due to gasoline and car sales.

Well, considering gas prices are stupidly expensive right now, the only reason why gas affected retail sales was due to the increase in price.

And then there are car sales. January car sales were actually down for the month. So how in the heck did car sales bump up the retail sales report? Because auto makers were charging higher prices.

Do you get what I’m trying to imply here? The 0.3% gain in retail sales was due to INFLATION, not growth.

You take both of those things out of the report and retail sales would have been flat for the month.

But what really made me giddy was the fact that the two companies I’m shorting now – one a retailer and the other a car manufacturer – were both down on the news.

Listen, I don’t expect the many investors to dig into the retail sales report and realize the error of their ways. If they did, the Dow would drop 1,000 points.

But with ‘good news’ like this, I simply can’t wait for the market to finally catch up and move lower.