Scratch its surface and it is quickly apparent that the January retail sales report wasn’t as good as it appeared at first glance. Dig a little deeper and it actually looks awful. The Commerce Department on Monday reported that retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in January from December, better than the flat reading that economists expected. A measure excluding sales at motor vehicle dealers, gasoline stations, hardware stores and restaurants—the so-called control group economists use to track gross domestic product—rose...

Source: Wall Street Journal March 11, 2019 16:18 UTC