10 charts: the death of the Almighty Consumer continues to be premature (and other Consumer sundries)

Transaction data, hotel bookings, value shoppers, booze hounds, student borrowers . . . we got it all

• checking in on the Almighty Consumer, tariff uncertain, or nay?

• transaction data says: ‘same as it ever was,’ hotel bookings, too

• value shoppers and ‘squeezed’ low-income shoppers? we got those

• maybe it’s the tax refunds?

• an unexpected correlate to Big Box sales growth

• e-commerce is doing something incredible

• student loans and the impact to credit scores

• which employees do the booziest brunches?

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The death of the Almighty Consumer continues to be premature (and other Consumer sundries)

It’s been a week or so since The Great Tariff Uncertainty Crisis hit fever pitch, and it’s been a week or so since it continues to be all sizzle, no steak:

WSJ headlines are a pretty representative sample of what the hivemind was hollering about.

Consumers were (supposedly) on a razor’s age, as tariff uncertainty loomed like a cloud, and recession was nigh.

As Random Walk meticulously laid out (in a series of posts), little-to-none of the actual data supported the panic. Outside of some pretty obviously weather-related noise towards the end of February, everything seemed pretty OK. There are certainly plenty of things to worry about, but none of them new, and therefore no reason to think that we wouldn’t keep-on-keeping-on, just as we did before.

Whatever “downturn” is/was in the offing, it’s the same steady “downturn” that’s been going on for over a year. As best as I can tell, the Great Tariff Uncertainty Crisis is mostly fake.¹Is it possible there’s yet some other shoe to drop? Of course. And business spending and investment is a much harder thing to observe (but there too, the data is mixed, and certainly not uniformly gloomy).

But anyways, how does it look ~1 week later?

Pretty much the same, it turns out.

Consumers are spending

Are consumers slowing down?

Well, let’s take a look at some spending data:

JPM

Total consumer spending, retail and discretionary, are all trending above last year.

So, consumers appear to be spending money, pretty much as per usual. Even “travel and entertainment” looks like it’s on the verge of catching back up, but that’s really the only category that’s taken a hit.

If total consumer spending is slightly higher than last year, that’s not exactly screaming crisis, now is it.

Travel too?

And even re. travel—where there was some particularly suspect hollering—there’s at least some data that indicates that’s pretty ok, too:

CoStar

Advance hotel booking are a bit up, and then down, and then up.

It’s almost like the slight seasonal shifts in when the holidays land is creating some strange yoy comps, but otherwise, the picture looks pretty OK.²

Value-shopping and trade downs (and the lowest-income shopper)

Dollar General DG 0.00%↑ said the lowest income shoppers are getting squeezed, and higher income shoppers are trading down to value.

I’m sure that’s true. But it’s been true since at least the beginning of 2024, and probably longer. Cautious Consumerism has been, and continues to be, the new normal. We are all Walmart shoppers, now.

Look at spending growth for General Merchandise (i.e. big box retailers) by income bracket: