pa href=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DCO0nRelbjrbN62F2qPSOEdD67c/a”img src=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/DCO0nRelbjrbN62F2qPSOEdD67c/i” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pJust a reminder to everyone: Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, so if you know what consumers are up to, you’ll have a pretty good handle on where the economy is headed.br /br /You may remember several weeks ago strong January a href=”http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/retail-growth-already-skyrocketing-in.html”span style=”color: rgb(51, 51, 255);”results from several retailers/span./a The a style=”color: rgb(51, 51, 255);” href=”http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-evidence-of-retail-growth-from.html”brightest report coming from Walmart/a which alone accounts for close to one quarter of the overall retail number. The government followed shortly there after with a “surprising” 1% growth number in retail for January alone.br /br /What came as a huge surprise today was just how well a href=”http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/2009/3/5/walmart_posts_strong_feb_sales_raises.htm”Walmart fared in February./abr /Sales in Feb can truly be categorized as skyrocketing… total sales rose from $27.7B in Jan to $30.0B in Feb. That’s an unheard of 98% annualized clip! And in a short month no less. Walmart quickly responded to these results by raising it’s dividend payout.br /br /Apart from Walmart, yesterday’s report on a href=”http://bloomberg.econoday.com/byshoweventfull.asp?fid=437496amp;cust=bloombergamp;year=2009″retail chain stores indicated major improvements/a in February. Rates of sales contraction span style=”font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;”slowed significantly/span in the month. Not surprisingly, Walmart’s chain stores once again led the report and posted their strongest results since June. Many other chains, in stark comparison to prior months, were extremely positive in their description of business conditions with some actually describing their retail traffic as strong.br /br /This is quite possibly the firmest leading indicator to date on our growing list of well over a href=”http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/101-reasons-plus-9-optimists.html”101 economic positives/a, that along with a href=”http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/real-time-center/survey-of-professional-forecasters/2009/survq109.cfm”43 Fed economists/a points to an overall return to US economic a href=”http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/evidence-points-to-recessions-end-by.html”span style=”color: rgb(51, 51, 255);”growth by summer/span./adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”div/div
No Gloom here. Only Good News.
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a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416560610?ie=UTF8tag=thegooneweco-20linkCode=as2camp=1789creative=9325creativeASIN=1416560610″The Power of Positive Thinking/a
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a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743243153?ie=UTF8tag=thegooneweco-20linkCode=as2camp=1789creative=390957creativeASIN=0743243153″The Road Less Traveled/a
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Last 5 posts by Eldon Mast

• Good News Wrap - First Week of Sept - September 8th, 2009
• Mr. Roubini, Please Have a Seat Already - April 26th, 2009
• Not All Banks Increased Loan Write-Offs in Q1 - April 24th, 2009
• Seven Banks Have Now Paid Back TARP - April 21st, 2009
• Four More Analysts Call Market Bottom - April 17th, 2009