It was a rough day for the stock market yesterday, with the Dow Jones average losing 42 points, its biggest drop this month. Many financial pundits blamed a weak retail-sales report; the Commerce Department announced yesterday that retail sales had increased in January by just 0.3 percent, the smallest monthly rise since last June.
In actuality, the retail report may have been totally unrelated to the drop in the Dow. These reports are always forecast by economists, and the consensus was that the January increase in retail sales would be about 0.5 percent, so it didn't miss that number by much. The market, more than likely, had already incorporated the idea that retail sales had been a bit sluggish in January. And the company listed on the Dow that had the day's biggest drop was Exxon Mobil, which shouldn't have a very strong relationship to retail prices.
And the 0.3 percent increase over December's retail-sales figure was also a 7.8 percent increase over retail sales from January 2010. So the news wasn't all bad.
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