Needing Some New Benchmarks

Disruptions and unexpected consumer reactions to the COVID pandemic has messed up a lot of years of market data. In broad terms, we had built up a treasure chest of information on how the economy performs – something that helps with forecasting and even things like borrowing for business expansion.

But the COVID disruptions mean we might have to start all over again with our trend analysis.

A case study in this can be found in the July figures from the wholesale sector. Now this is wholesale, not retail but it is a bellwether or indicator of where the consumer market will be headed.

What we saw in July was that lumber prices had come back down – they dropped as much as 23%, depending on the category. But that was coming off a huge increase in prices over the past year as people who were hunkering down decided to renovate and build.

And we also saw automotive sales improve as some manufacturers were finally able to get their hands on microchips, clearing the way for delivery to dealers.