April retail sales surge speeds down to 0.3% in the US

In April, retail sales in the United States slumped by 0.3% versus the previous month. That’s what the data of the Ministry of Trade uncovered on Monday.

The consensus forecast of analysts polled by Bloomberg also dropped a hint at a leap of 0.3%.

Thus, the soar in April speeded down greatly from the updated outcome of 0.8% in March.

April retail sales excluding vehicles, gasoline and construction materials (the so-called "control group" - the major indicator employed to calculate US GDP) tacked on by 0.4%, as expected. According to the updated data, in March, they inched up by 0.5%, but not by 0.4%, as previously reported.

Overall, sales in 9 of the 13 key categories of retail goods demonstrated surge in April.

The most considerable jump was recorded for clothing sales (1.4%), which appeared to be the highest outcome since March 2017.

Sales of vehicles headed north by only 0.1% after a leap of 2.1% in March. Besides this, sales of furniture inched up by 0.8%.

Gasoline release at gas stations tacked on by 0.8%, which is the most significant ascend since January. Gasoline prices in the United States are close to the maximum since 2014, which probably backed the retail sales figure in April.

Moreover, in April, retail sales without vehicles soared by 0.3% - it turned out to be weaker than the March value of 0.4% as well as market expectations for 0.5%.

The figure, from which vehicles and gasoline are excluded, headed north by 0.3%. As for the consensus forecast for this, it accounted for 0.4%.

In May, the index of manufacturing activity of New York Empire Manufacturing headed north to 20.1 points versus 15.8 points in April. At the same time, analysts on average anticipated a slump in the index to 15 points.