Retail sales are top of mind for Wall Street on Wednesday morning, with sales topping 3% in January, beating expectations of 1.9%.
Food and services came in at 7.2% and online retailers saw an increase of 1.3%.
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When looking at retail sales, Action Alerts PLUS portfolio manager Chris Versace, wrote that the retail numbers join "the hotter-than-expected January Employment Report and yesterday’s January Consumer Price Index report that showed less progress on inflation than the market was hoping for. Taking those data points together, it paints a picture of a stronger-than-expected economy and they will likely lead the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model higher vs. the 2.2% figure it had for the current quarter on February 8."
The sales numbers come in after a number of Federal Reserve officials spoke on Tuesday.
"Inflation is normalizing but it's coming down slowly," Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said. "I just think there's gonna be a lot more inertia, a lot more persistence to inflation than maybe we'd all want."
Outside of economic data points, earnings are still in focus for investors across Wall Street.
Airbnb reported earnings Tuesday night and it beat expectations.
In its shareholder letter, Airbnb said, "In Q4 2022, we had our highest number of active bookers yet, demonstrating guests’ excitement to travel on Airbnb despite evolving macroeconomic uncertainties. Globally, we’ve now had 1.4 billion cumulative guest arrivals. And heading into 2023, we see a strong backlog for Q1 with longer lead times for bookings in Q4 2022 compared to a year ago.
