This is just one of many examples as to why I love this industry so much. This morning the US Census Bureau released the December Retail sales numbers. Here is a clip from Marketwatch.com:

OmahaCharts Retail Stocks Analysis - S&P Retail ETF Unchanged After "Dreadful" Census Bureau Report

Scary right?

One would assume after such abysmal news it would be reflected in the price of retail stocks and most likely the overall market indexes?

About 3 hours later here is a look at the SPDR Retail ETF (XRT) as Well as the S&P 500:

OmahaCharts Retail Stocks Analysis Two - S&P Retail ETF Unchanged After "Dreadful" Census Bureau Report

OmahaCharts Retail Stocks Analysis Three - S&P Retail ETF Unchanged After "Dreadful" Census Bureau Report

A couple of takeaways from this:

  1. Don’t believe every clickbait headline news story you read online or elsewhere.
  2. All that matters is how the news, whatever it may be, is received by investors. “Bad news” might be good news and vice versa. Price is truth and almost all of the rest is gossip and hearsay.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Trent J. Smalley, CMT