Holiday Sales: Did they actually decrease?

Barry Ritholtz, an analyst who posts frequently on Seeking Alpha, takes a look at holiday sales and decides that they actually decreased this year. He notes that although the data from MasterCard Spening Pulse survey says that sales increased 3.6 percent between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it includes gasoline and restaurant purchases -- both of which had big price gains this year.

Excluding just the gas purchases, holiday sales rose a lackluster 2.4%. If we back out restaurants (and their price increases), then I ballpark sales at approximately 2% -- or a bit below the core rate of inflation. In other words, Real Sales may have reflected an actual loss over last year. This was despite the longer holiday shopping season.

Even more interesting, Ritholtz notes that luxury sales not including jewelery rose 7.1 percent, but if we include jewelery, they fell 1.9 percent. What we don't know is how much of the fall in jewelery was in watches -- typically bought by men -- or in actual jewelery. Men tend to be the first to cut back when times are tough, so the jewelery figure could just be an indication that they're worried enough about their future to deny themselves a treat -- but no so much as to deny their wives or girlfriends their handbags or shoes -- footwear was up six percent.

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