US holiday retail sales grow 3.1%, down from the previous year

US retail sales rose 3.1% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, as shoppers looked for last-minute Christmas deals amid big promotions, a Mastercard report showed on Tuesday.

The increase is lower than the 3.7% growth Mastercard forecast in September and last year’s 7.6% rise as higher interest rates and inflation pressured consumer spending.

Amazon.com and Walmart ramped up promotions through November in the United States to entice bargain-hunting shoppers, but analysts said that the discounts were not as deep as the prior year, when retailers were saddled with excess stock after the pandemic.

Some of those discounts were rolled back starting in December, when customers were expected to buy last-minute gifts and household goods on the Saturday before Christmas - dubbed “Super Saturday.”

Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CRFA Research, said many shoppers waited for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to make holiday purchases and finished the final sprint during Super Saturday.

“Consumers are still spending, but they’re still price conscious and want to stretch their budgets,” Sundaram said. He said the weeks between Cyber Monday and Super Saturday were a “soft period” for spending, but shoppers used the final weekend before Christmas to look for “big deals.” Ecommerce sales grew at the slower pace of 6.3% compared to last year’s 10.6% as the popularity of online shopping came off pandemic highs, the report showed.

Sales in the apparel and restaurant categories rose 2.4% and 7.8%, respectively, during the holiday shopping period, according to the Mastercard SpendingPulse report, while sales of electronics fell 0.4%.

Mastercard SpendingPulse measures in-store and online retail sales across all forms of payment. It excludes automotive sales.

Latam assets start last week of 2023 on positive note on rate-cut bets.

Latin American currencies and stocks entered the last week of the year with some vigor, extending gains from the prior week after a softer U.S. inflation report fortified bets of early rate-cuts. The MSCI’s index tracking Latin American stocks was up 0.7% by 1500 GMT, while a basket of regional currencies was up 0.2% against the dollar.

The broader stocks and currencies index posted weekly gains of 2.5% and 1.6% respectively. For the year, both the indexes have gained more than 20% so far. December has been a cheerful month for Latin American assets as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s dovish stance followed by a softer U.S. inflation report pushed investor expectations of rate-cuts as early as March. Brazil’s Bovespa index’s rally continued as it touched record highs of 133,437.99 points after having hit all-time highs last week. Further boosting Brazilian equities, Enauta rose 9.5%, hitting six-month highs, after the oil company said on Monday it acquired the entire 23% stake held by QatarEnergy Brasil Ltda in some oil fields in the Campos Basin for a total value of $150 million.

The Brazilian real also gained 0.5% against the greenback. Private economists in Brazil are forecasting a deeper monetary policy easing next year as their inflation expectations accommodate within the central bank’s target range, a weekly survey conducted by the monetary authority showed on Tuesday.

“(Brazil’s) inflation expectations for end-2024 remain 91bp(basis points) above the target and for 2025/26 remain stuck 50bp above the inflation target 3.0% midpoint, which likely reflects the expectation that the government will not deliver on the announced fiscal targets” Goldman Sachs economists said in a note. Argentina’s Merval index dipped 0.5% after rising slightly, after President Javier Milei signed a decree last week outlining economic reforms. Milei issued a decree calling for extraordinary sessions to speed up reforms, reinstate the tax on salaries abolished by the previous government, and modernize the electoral process. “In the short term, though, execution risks persist related to the implementation of the decree,” J.P.Morgan economists said in a note.

Currencies of oil-exporting countries, the Mexican peso and the Colombian peso rose 0.4% and 0.5% as oil prices rose $2 per barrel finding support from geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and investor optimism on U.S. rate-cuts. Among individual companies, Brazil’s Allos rose 1.2%, after the shopping mall operator is set to sell stakes in several of its shopping malls for a total 442.8 million reais ($91.32 million).

The Brazilian real also gained 0.5% against the greenback. Private economists in Brazil are forecasting a deeper monetary policy easing next year as their inflation expectations accommodate within the central bank’s target range, a weekly survey conducted by the monetary authority showed on Tuesday.

Agencies