Reminder that this isn't inflation-adjusted - this is just nominal dollars spent (though it is adjusted for seasonality). For instance, last month it was 0.4% up, but when we got volumes for the quarter a week later, we had a fall of 0.6% (all the initial reads for the months in the quarter were positive).
We don't get the volumes after a week this time around - they're quarterly. Unless we've got deflation happening in this space, this is going to be a negative print when volumes come out. We may at some point end up with deflation here through discounting, which would then make this an actual increase in volumes.
Retail has been slowing for months in terms of amount of stuff purchased. This means that people are slowing spending - remembering that we also have strong population growth.
