The NYT headlines tells us that: "Day After Rally, Stocks Retreat on Consumer Weakness." The problem with this story is that anyone who carefully read the GDP report yesterday would not have been at all surprised by the data on consumer spending released today. It was already included in the third quarter GDP.
Those of us who passed third grade arithmetic would look at the number reported for third quarter consumption, then subtract out the numbers on monthly consumption that the Commerce Department had already released for July and August, and voila, we would know what number the Commerce Department was going to release for September consumption.
Any Wall Street traders who were surprised by the September consumption data should be looking for a new line of work.
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