, Columnist
Amazon Makes It Harder to Gauge Consumers’ Health
Its effect on retailers skews what their results can tell us about demand. Plus the market snores on Fed minutes.
The e-commerce giant exerts a strong distortion field.
Photographer: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here.
Some big U.S. retailers announced their results on Wednesday, and they were very good and better than expected. This reflects very well on the managers and employees of those companies, but it tells us little about what is happening to U.S. consumer demand. Everything is still distorted by the long shadow cast by Amazon.