Real Estate and Financial Market - Economic Roundup

Retail sales saw a drop for June, according to advance estimates released by the Census Bureau last week. June retail sales, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $360.2 billion, the bureau said. This represented a 0.5 percent decrease from May, but was still 4.8 percent above June 2009 sales.
 
June's retail decline, the second consecutive monthly drop, was largely attributed to automotive sales, which were down 2.3 percent, and gasoline sales, which dropped 2 percent for the month.
 
"There looks to be sort of mild deceleration even into the month of July," Steven Wieting, managing director of economic and market analysis for Citigroup told the Washington Post. "All told, this is slowdown material."
 
That said, a drop in gas sales helped fuel respectable increases in some other retail categories. June enjoyed a 1.3 percent increase in electronics and appliance sales, and a 0.6 percent increase in clothing spending.
 
Meanwhile, the producer price index (PPI) for finished goods fell 0.5 percent in June, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. June's decrease followed declines of 0.3 percent in May and 0.1 percent in April.
 
Prices paid by producers for intermediate materials, supplies and components decreased 0.9 percent in June, the first decline since July 2009, while crude goods dropped 2.4 percent.
 
Another notable drop was food prices, which fell 2.2 percent, marking the category's third straight decline. More than half of the June decrease can be attributed to prices for fresh and dry vegetables, which dropped 21.8 percent.