Wall St. surges on retail optimism around holiday season



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Wall St. surges on retail optimism around holiday season

On Tuesday, all three key indices of Wall St. had eked out modest gains as upbeat earnings’ report from Home Depot, the United States’ largest home improvement retailer, alongside a strong retail sales data in October had reignited optimism regarding a solid consumer spending over holiday quarter.

If truth is to be spoken, in the day’s decent rally in major Wall Street stock indices was almost entirely catalyzed by a stronger-than-anticipated retail sales data in October, as a robust spending appetite among US consumers had underscored that American shoppers are not fretted about a radical policy change from the US Federal Reserve to put the kibosh on a sky-rocketing inflation, eventually spurring up hopes of a strong holiday sales with retailers leading the tally of gains.

In factuality, earlier in the day, US Commerce Department data had unveiled that US retail sales soared 1.7 per cent last month, well-above an analysts estimate of 1.4 per cent, illustrating that a lion’s share of Americans had started off holiday shopping much earlier-than-anticipated over worries that a lingering supply chain disruption could lead to a meteoric price-surge.

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Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. wind down, trade-sensitive Dow edged 0.15 per cent higher to 36,142.22 and benchmark S&P 500 added 0.39 per cent to 4,700.9, while tech-heavy Nasdaq gained as much as 0.76 per cent to 15,973.86.

Meanwhile, citing that the day’s October retail sales data had been a fresh breath of air in the Wall Street amid uncertainties over US Fed policy decision, a senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Brian Jacobsen said, “This does give people a sigh of relief that the retail outlook is still pretty rosy.

The outlook is one where prices are rising but consumer spending is still strong and it looks like the supply chains are stressed but still, we’re able to get goods on the shelves”.