🦔US retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the biggest drop in over a year and well below the small gain economists expected. The control group, which strips out volatile categories and feeds into GDP calculations, fell 0.4% when forecasters had it rising 0.3%. Online sales dropped 2.2% after Amazon pulled Prime Day into June. Consumer sentiment fell again this month. Gas is at $4.08 a gallon, up 92 cents from a year ago. Credit card debt has passed a trillion dollars, up 60% in five years. My Take Yesterday I wrote about the two legs holding this economy up, a housing market losing steam and an AI buildout funded with debt. Today the consumer, which is about 70% of GDP, just showed up limping. The tax refunds that propped up spring spending are gone, gas costs a dollar more than last year, and credit card balances are at records with delinquencies climbing. People are tapped, and this data confirms it. I don't think one bad month is a recession call, and some of the drop is just Prime Day shifting into June. But stack this next to last week's weak jobs numbers, the housing freeze, and consumer sentiment falling again, and the picture gets harder to wave off. The economy has been running on the willingness of American households to keep spending through inflation and rising debt. At some point that willingness hits a wall, and I think we're closer to it than the stock market is pricing in. Hedgie🤗