Spread Bets on U.S. Stocks

238910 Resource 133529 120646 120646 1251983088380 1251983088380 Controlled Retail Data Can't Bring Down U.S. Stock Futures

Weak retail data in August

Back to school sales couldn't jump start the ailing retail sector last month. Indeed, part of that problem is being blamed on the late Labour Day holiday in the U.S., which delayed some school openings. Additionally, there are murmurs that Cash for Clunkers took discretionary spending away as consumers rushed to spend money on new cars. However, the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125197696821182967.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business" target="_blank" title="retail sales data, U.S. stock futures, back to school, Cash for Clunkers, U.S. stock market, stocks, economy, economic data">weaker August sales data</a> still shows less of a decline than what was seen in August. So, even though the data is weak, it's not as weak as it has been. That is what investors are focusing on today, ahead of the U.S. stock market open.  <a href="item/238909" target="_blank" title="retail sales data, U.S. stock futures, back to school, Cash for Clunkers, U.S. stock market, stocks, economy, economic data">U.S. stock futures</a> are higher right now, indicating that a solid open may be in the cards for today, for the first time all week. 9 application/xml false back to school Cash for Clunkers economic data economy retail sales data stocks U.S. stock futures U.S. stock market Spread Bets on U.S. Stocks U.S. stock futures and more http://www.gftuk.com/land/index.asp?aid=53 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 GTB5 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 mmarquit 63.248.48.57 false true false false true 133529 blog blogsite/GFTUK/web