After they unexpectedly surged in November and December (driven in large part by a jump in Food Services), headline retail sales in January were expected to decline just 0.2%, but BofA nailed it once again with a large 0.8% MoM drop. That dragged the YoY retail sales down to just 0.6%...

That is the worst monthly decline since March 2023 and worst YoY rise since May 2020.

Motor Vehicles and Parts and Building Materials saw the largest decline MoM...

On a YoY NSA basis, Gas Stations and Building Materials were the biggest drag, while online retailers and Food Services were the biggest upside drivers...

Core Retail Sales also declined (-0.5% MoM vs +0.2% exp), which dragged the YoY levels down to their lowest since the COVID lockdowns...

Adjusted (crudely) for inflation, this was a huge drop in 'real' retail sales. REAL retail sales have declined for 11 of the last 15 months - in other words, on a crude basis (Ret Sales - CPI), Americans aren't buying more shit.

Finally, the control group - used to feed through to the GDP calculation - tumbled 0.4% MoM (vs expectations of +0.2%).

Soft-landing morphing into a stagflationary crash-landing?