Thursday, October 30, 2014

Nonstore Retail Sales Analysis: The Das Boot Edition

October 23, 2014
Amazon posts huge loss, warns of more

The company projected losses as deep as $570 million for the fourth quarter, and revenue of $27.3 billion to $30.3 billion. That's shy of the average $30.9 billion analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast.

The following chart shows nonstore retail sales.


Click to enlarge.

I have added an exponential trend line in red from the low point in 2009 through 2013. So far, 2014 isn't looking all that good.

The next chart shows the deviation from the exponential trend.


Click to enlarge.



Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

A half billion dollar loss on $30 billion in sales. And the CEO makes how much per year? I could lose twice that much for half his salary!

Stagflationary Mark said...

Anonymous,

It's only a $2 loss for every man, woman, and child in the USA. That's how robust Christmas will be!

whydibuy said...

Every Year we read about some predictions for a bad Christmas for retail and then in Jan the story always changes to sales were just fine.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Every single year that I can remember.

There must be some prerequisite to be bearish about Christmas sales to get your yearly Christmas bonus or something.

Stagflationary Mark said...

whydibuy,

Every single year that I can remember.

You can only remember years since the Great Recession? No wonder you have been bullish!

Anonymous said...

I would have chosen a clip from U-571, but that's just me.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Anonymous,

Yeah, I really enjoyed U-571. I've seen both movies quite a few times. :)

whydibuy said...

Every year I can remember in my lifetime.
Hint: I'm not a toddler.
There, I've edited my post to help in your reading comprehension.

My prediction. Christmas sales will turn out to be very good to excellent this year as they are every year.

Stagflationary Mark said...

whydibuy,

Every year I can remember in my lifetime.

My reading comprehension seems fine. I never thought or claimed you were a toddler.

You continue to claim that you cannot remember any years during the Great Recession though. Once again, it therefore does not surprise me that you are so bullish on the economy. As far back as you can remember, Christmas sales have always been fine.

That's okay. I don't have the best memory either. Fortunately, I started this bearish blog in the fall of 2007 (a few months before the Great Recession). It is therefore relatively easy for me to go back and read about crappy Christmas seasons of the fairly recent past.