Key Points: The strength and consistency of the US consumer have provided ballast for the broader economy, but lately there have been some signs of fatigue. The aim of this report is to determine whether the consumer is hitting a soft patch or a wall. Last year the consumer had to contend with enormous crosscurrents. At the end of the day though, job gains, strong wage growth and the drawdown of “excess savings” overpowered the

Key Points: Since founding Rubinson Research one year ago, we’ve developed dozens of frameworks to measure the well-being of the consumer – both in aggregate and by income cohort. Those indicators led us to be bullish on the consumer for the past year. Our frameworks though, are no longer as supportive as they had been. Labor markets are strong and balance sheets are fortress-like – but we are seeing some signs of strain. People are

Key Points: The food industry tends to be fairly staid with annualized growth of ~2% in real terms. The pandemic, however, upended consumer behavior, and channel shares have swung wildly over the past few years. This report studies the food sector from three perspectives – retailers, restaurants, and packaged food companies. At its peak, spending on food at home outpaced ‘normal’ by $42 billion in real terms. That’s since been whittled down to $12 billion,

Key Points: The consumer wasn’t the cause of upheaval in the banking system, but they may still feel some collateral damage. This report focuses on two key risks that could affect future spending – consumer liquidity and access to credit. The consumer has been highly liquid over the past few years, and that’s helped them part with “excess savings” to fuel consumption. However, the cost of liquidity has increased now that the yield on a

Key Points: The narrative around the US consumer seems to have shifted. As recently as a few months ago, we were hearing predictions of doom and gloom, but ever since the January jobs and retail sales data were released, the primary concern we’re hearing is that the consumer is running too hot. This report seeks to understand where the consumer is headed. We assess both the relevant data and consumer behavior. The data tell us

Key Points: I covered Amazon stock in a previous life, and while I’m no longer in the game of conjuring up price targets, that hasn’t stopped me from analyzing the company’s financials. We focus on Amazon’s retail business in this report. Our aim is to highlight important metrics that often get overlooked. Amazon’s fulfillment center buildout was akin to adding KSS, TSCO, RH, ULTA, DKS, M, and URBN – the entire companies – for two

Key Points: The consumer made it through 2022 far better than many expected. The “fiscal cliff’ coupled with above-trend inflation represented a $1.5 trillion headwind, but you’d never know it from looking at spending trends. Real consumption grew by +2% – like clockwork. But is the consumer up for a command performance? The job market will have a lot say about that. This report seeks to quantify the effects that layoffs at Big Tech might

Key Points: In prior reports we assessed what consumer spending will look like in 2023 and which categories will perform best. Clients have also been asking what the future might hold for high- and low-end consumers, and that’s the subject of this report. We think there’s money in the middle. We constructed a rigorous analysis of spending and savings by income. We modelled 10 years of history, and we project what spending might look like

Key Points: We launched the first iteration of the Idea Generator two months ago, and we’re updating it to incorporate client feedback. Our original framework focused on ranking ~50 stocks in the consumer arena. The new model ranks ~170 stocks that are drawn from a broader set of industries, including entertainment, tech, building products, airlines, and others. Our new Idea Generator incorporates 16 elements, many of which are proprietary in nature. The weights of each

Summary Points: When it comes to analyzing the US consumer, there’s no shortage of data to explore. The hard part is separating the signal from the noise. Our job is to study anything and everything that may influence consumption, and while our reports typically focus on a single issue that we analyze in depth, this one provides more of a wide-angle view. We highlight 10 relevant issues and offer a pointed assessment of each with