A weekly measure of sales at chain stores, discounters, and department stores. It is a less consistent indicator of retail sales than the weekly ICSC 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. 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 only about 10 percent of total retail sales. Why Investors Care
| Released on 7/15/08 For wk 7/12 2008 | ||||||||
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Highlights
Chain-store sales remain firm in July, the results from both ICSC-UBS released earlier this morning and Redbook that shows a very solid +2.7 percent same-store year-on-year sales pace. Gains of course are being fed by tax rebates which consumers are converting into basic goods, reflected in this morning's non-auto readings in the Commerce Department's retail trade report for June. The question of course is whether sales will begin to tail off as rebates wind down, and Redbook and ICSC-UBS will likely offer some of the earliest indications for this.
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