China Suffers Worst Start To A Year For Retail Sales Growth Since 2002

With its credit impulse wearing off (and inflation spikes stalling any hopes of renewed stimulus anytime soon), it appears China’s always-happy consumer is not so happy as 2017 begins.

Against expectations of a 10.6% year-over-year gain in year-to-date cumulative retail sales, February saw just a 9.5% rise – the weakest February since 2002.

Presumably there is some lunar-new-year adjustment that will rescue this terrible print from its 15 year lows but we note once again that every one of the 37 analysts over-estimated (or forgot to read the calendar).

This was a 4 standard deviation miss…