British Retail Consortium data % y/y for January
- expected +0.7% y/y, prior +0.6%
More via rtrsReuters ::
Non-food sales fell 1.2 percent over the three months to January
- a smaller fall than in the three months to December
- Over a 12-month period non-food sales showed their first annual decline in nine years
British Retail Consortium (BRC) comments:
- "Rising food prices continued to inflate sales growth and absorb the lion's share of shoppers' squeezed budgets, while sales of non-food items struggled in January"
- "The going remains bumpy as consumers are still seeing wages fall in real terms. Although inflation will ease a bit this year these pressures will remain."
Data also from payments firm Barclaycard
- its card users upped the pace of spending on essentials in January while increases in spending on non-essentials slowed
- Overall spending rose by an annual 3.9 percent, a touch slower than December's increase of 4.0 percent
- driven by the strongest increase in supermarket spending in seven months which was up 4.4 percent
- Barclaycard Managing Director Paul Lockstone said January's rise in overall spending represented a strong start to 2018. "But faltering confidence levels across the board suggests that consumers are feeling the effects of a post-Christmas slump, as well as the wider impact of inflation, on their everyday lives"
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British Retail Consortium data "like-for-like" sales (strips out changes in store size)
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ps. No one cares about this data right now ... eye are on eqity markets both locally here in Asia and the overnight index trade elsewhere
