Econoday Economic Report: Redbook August 20, 2013

2013 Economic Calendar

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Redbook

Released On 8/20/2013 8:55:00 AM For wk8/17, 2013

	Prior	Actual
Store Sales Y/Y change	3.7 %	3.4 %

Highlights
Both ICSC-Goldman, and now Redbook, report slight improvement for same-store sales, at a year-on-year plus 3.4 percent in the August 17 week for Redbook which, like ICSC-Goldman, is up a couple of tenths from the month-ago trend. Redbook offers a specific comparison for August-to-July which is up 0.2 percent so far this month.

Redbook notes early strength for back-to-school sales especially in the South where school starts earlier than other regions. The report notes that unseasonably cool weather has been a plus for back-to-school sales but a negative for summer goods including air conditioners and sporting equipment.

Definition
A weekly measure of comparable store sales at chain stores, discounters, and department stores. It is a less consistent indicator of retail sales than the weekly ICSC-Goldman 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 through the month. 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 about 10 percent of total retail sales. Why Investors Care