The Presidential election is not far away, and this installment of our “Up-to-Data” podcast explores how policy might influence consumer behavior.  When it comes to policy, there’s a lot to consider, and we’re especially attuned to distributional shifts that could occur as a result.  The presentation also takes stock of household balance sheets, including the supply of credit.  Finally, we touch on “inventory freshness” now that retailers have finished reporting Q1 results — the outlook for gross margins is still biased to the upside.  The…

We’ve analyzed a ton of new data over the past week.  Issue #4 of our podcast makes sure you are up to date.  It walks you through incremental data from the Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Survey, April retail sales, e-Commerce penetration, Capital One, Discover Financial, Home Depot, the New York Fed’s household debt and credit report, the San Francisco Fed’s excess savings analysis, and more.  We expect the consumer to remain strong.  In our view, mixed signals from companies have more to do with lower…

In issue #3 we analyze immigration, excess savings, and the low-end consumer.  Immigration has been a big contributor to the labor force, and with elections in the offing, it presents more than a trivial risk.  We track the amount of construction put into place due to the CHIPS Act.  We also offer an analysis of the US mattress industry.  We compare units sold to normal, and we stack up the TPX business model to other vertically-integrated retailers/brands.

In issue #2 we analyze the effect rising energy prices may have on consumption.  One month ago, energy prices would’ve been a 75 basis-point “good guy” for the consumer.  Now it’s more of a marginal friend.  We measure inflation by income cohort, also focus on credit card delinquency trends and the profile of housing inventory.

In Issue #1 we dig into macro issues like tax refunds, capital gains, the wealth effect, credit card application and rejection rates.  We also look at excess savings for the bottom 40% of income, and the top 20%.  We offered up a new analysis on Lululemon that maps store productivity versus inventory productivity to complement the work we recently did on Nike.