“There is a story for just about everyone these days,” said Chris Kuehl, PhD, economist for the National Association of Credit Management (NACM). “If one is of a more pessimistic bent, there is the continued high rate of unemployment, the struggles in the housing sector and the sense that nobody in the political realm has a clue what to do about any of this. There is the mess in Europe, the gyrations in stocks and consumer polls that suggest that vast numbers of people are in bed with the covers pulled over their heads. If you tend toward optimistic, there is something for you as well, especially recently.”
Retail numbers are coming in far more robust than anybody anticipated. Black Friday totals were almost 7% above last year and records were set in terms of dollar expenditures. Subsequent Cyber Monday sales were also just as dramatic. There is also evidence that manufacturers are setting up to do far more capital spending than in past years. Even the savings rate for consumers has started to creep back up after falling back to 3.3%. “It would be nice to see some gains in select areas,” said Kuehl, “but there are no emergency warning signs popping up at this point either.”
Much the same message can be gleaned from this month’s CMI data; there is something to depress the pessimistic and something to provide encouragement to the optimistic as well. The most negative news came in sales, which tumbled from the 61.4 high reached in September to 58.2 in November—the lowest reading in the last year. The decline was seen across the board in both the manufacturing and service sectors. Some of this is to be expected as the end of the year draws closer, and there is reason to expect gains in the months to come if the data on capital expenditure planning is reliable.
Read the full Credit Manager's Index of November 2011 on the NAMC website.