Black Friday Steals Christmas in US

We have seen movies and red stories about the Grinch stealing Christmas, but never thought that Black Friday would do such a thing. Retail sales usually jump in December because of he Christmas period. But this time, retail sales posted such a huge decline in December that it was the biggest decline in decades.

Retail sales post a terrible number, missing expectations of a 0.1% growth and declined by 1.2% in December, which was the biggest decline since 2007. Core retail sales number was even worse as it declined by 1.8% that month which is the biggest fall since 2000. The idea is that the Black Friday in November attracted all the buyers and as a result retail sales suffer in December.

This holds some truth, although we didn’t see a big jump in the report which was released in December. But, you can’t explain such terrible numbers otherwise. It seems that the majority of forex traders is thinking just that because the USD is reversing back after falling for 40 pips, otherwise the Buck would have crashed.