[IP] Re: Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tobin Maginnis <ptm@pix.cs.olemiss.edu>
Date: December 2, 2008 10:05:47 AM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales

Dave,

Barry did not take inflation into consideration which more than  
accounts for the difference! Using the 1980 BLS method, inflation for  
the last year has averaged more than 11%! Therefore sales figures are  
actually down 11%-7% or 4%!


From: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/download_cpi?mode=text
		CPI-U		SGS-Alt	
		Index	CPI-U	CPI-Equiv	SGS-Alt
Year	Month	1982/4=100	Yr/Yr %	Index	Yr/Yr %
2007	Oct	208.9	3.54%	551.9	11.07%
2007	Nov	210.2	4.31%	556.3	11.75%
2007	Dec	210.0	4.08%	564.5	11.73%
2008	Jan	211.1	4.28%	572.2	11.80%
2008	Feb	211.7	4.03%	582.4	11.56%
2008	Mar	213.5	3.98%	589.3	11.58%
2008	Apr	214.8	3.94%	593.5	11.53%
2008	May	216.6	4.18%	599.6	11.82%
2008	Jun	218.8	5.02%	612.3	12.59%
2008	Jul	220.0	5.60%	617.8	13.36%
2008	Aug	219.1	5.37%	617.5	13.22%
2008	Sep	218.8	4.94%	619.0	12.86%
2008	Oct	216.6	3.66%	616.1	11.63%


David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
> From: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks)
> Date: December 1, 2008 11:18:20 PM EST
> To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy@warpspeed.com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales
> Spinning Black Friday Retail Sales
> Posted By Barry Ritholtz On December 1, 2008 @ 7:11 am
> <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/spinning-black-friday-retail-sales/ 
> >
> A few things you can count on every year around this time:
>    • Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest  
> groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;
>    • Headline writers will get it wrong
>    • Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales;
>    • Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong;
> Such is the current situation with the Black Friday sales data, with  
> reports still trickling in from around the country.
> The WSJ goes for a hat trick of errors, starting with this article’s  
> headline:
> • [1] Holiday Shopping Off to Strong Start
> What’s wrong with this? First, as opposed to actual sales data, they  
> rely on a “survey of 3,370 shoppers, the National Retail Federation  
> estimated shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over the weekend, up  
> 7.2% over last year’s $347.55.” The National Retail Federation is  
> hardly the objective group you want crafting (or hiring 3rd parties  
> to create)  survey questions; 2nd, we know that humans are terrible  
> at forecasting their own behaviors. Historically, their projections  
> have had little correlation with their actual spending patterns. And  
> third, the headline is belied by the details contained in the  
> article. ([2] MarketWatch was no better)
> [snip]RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>
> -------------------------------------------




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