Canadian retail sales ticked up in November – RBC

Commenting on the Canadian Retail Sales data that was published on Friday, "the tick up in Canadian retail sales in November breaks a string of generally softer economic data for the month after disappointing manufacturing and wholesale reports earlier this week,"noted Nathan Janzen, Senior Economist at RBC.

Key quotes

"It would take more reports like this one to really alter what have been lackluster trends in the retail sector, though. Excluding price impacts, volume sales were still unchanged from a year ago in November (despite a 0.7% month-over-month increase)."

"Still, domestic growth concerns are once again front and center at the Bank of Canada, despite what looks like a less-worrying external backdrop with the US and China agreeing to hit pause in their ongoing trade war."

"Overall economic activity (i.e. GDP) looks like it increased little if at all in Q4. Some of that softness, but not all, is due to transitory factors. The central bank will rightly be more focused on economic data releases until it becomes clear whether recent faltering is a sign of underlying fundamental deterioration, or yet another statistical blip in what is often volatile Canadian economic data."