Despite weak consumer sentiment, an uptick in household debt delinquencies, and anecdotal reports of financial distress, the overarching narrative remains that consumers as a whole are healthy, and they are spending.
This is important because personal consumption accounts for about 70% of GDP.
On Thursday, we learned monthly retail sales grew 0.6% in June to $720 billion. This metric is hovering near record highs.
This trend was confirmed last week by America’s largest banks, which know exactly how much money people have, how much they’re spending, and how they’re paying for it.
“The consumer basically seems to be fine,” JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts on Tuesday. “You see a little bit more stress in the lower income bands than you see in the higher income bands. But that’s always true. That’s pretty much definitionally true. And nothing there is out of …