Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Consumers Beating Tariffs to the Punch | S2 E032 | 04-16-25

Transcript

Consumers Beating Tariffs to the Punch | S2 E032 | 04-16-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: We've been concerned about how resilient the consumer can be this year and the report we got today shows that they are still out there and spending.
• 0:06
  Megan Horneman: It is Wednesday, april the 16th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:10
  Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, hit the alarm bell and you can share it with friends, family or colleagues.
• 0:15
  Megan Horneman: Today we wanted to come to you to give you a review of what we saw in the retail sales report this morning.
• 0:21
  Megan Horneman: For the month of March and when you look at the headline number, retail sales rose the most that we've seen since January of 2023.
• 0:34
  Megan Horneman: It came in about as expected at 1.4%.
• 0:35
  Megan Horneman: But when you strip out things like auto and then autos and gas, these rose more than expected.
• 0:39
  Megan Horneman: Let's go into some of the details.
• 0:41
  Megan Horneman: The three biggest categories that led to the increase was motor vehicles, building materials and then eating out at restaurants.
• 0:48
  Megan Horneman: So we've got a little bit of conflicting information here.
• 0:51
  Megan Horneman: Obviously, it's showing us that consumers are trying to get ahead of the tariffs that are set to go into effect in the beginning of May the tariffs on the autos, auto parts, the building materials these saw the big increases and we think that's front running these tariffs Now.
• 1:07
  Megan Horneman: But when you look at the restaurants.
• 1:09
  Megan Horneman: This is really a discretionary category that we followed.
• 1:12
  Megan Horneman: It had a rough start to the year, so this could be some give back on a month over month basis, but we saw a pretty big uptick in the spending at restaurants.
• 1:24
  Megan Horneman: Now this is a big report.
• 1:25
  Megan Horneman: It's not an inflation-adjusted report, so we have to consider that.
• 1:29
  Megan Horneman: But again, it will feed into the first quarter GDP and if this stays without major revisions, it's looking like the first quarter GDP will be in the positive territory.
• 1:40
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 1:42
  Megan Horneman: We'll be back again.
• 1:43
  Megan Horneman: We'll get some more information tomorrow on the housing market, so we'll come back to give some updates on that and if you'd like a further history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmeganfm.
• 1:53
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.