How will the markets trade today? There are several positives: strong retail sales, LIBOR rates down slightly, lack of negative earnings commentary.
Drew Matus at Lehman Brothers notes that the strong retail sales "suggests sharply higher personal consumption than we had expected and suggests fourth quarter GDP growth of close to 1.0 percent, versus our previous tracking of 0.1 percent. This dramatically reduces the odds of a negative print during the quarter..."
Why does that matter? Because a negative GDP for the quarter would support the idea that we are heading into a recession.
The main negative is that the PPI showed stronger inflation.
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