UK retail sales: data remains on the bright side

Macroeconomic data for the UK remains on the bright side, despite a recent increase in the number of new coronavirus cases and new restrictive measures.

As in the USA, UK Retail Sales indexes have quickly overcome the coronavirus collapse and are reaching new highs. In August, excluding fuel, sales were 4.3% above the level of the same month a year earlier and slightly better than predicted.

Total sales in the first 8 months of the year were 4.8% lower than in the same period a year earlier. This is an intermediate result between China and the USA. In China, the drop is twice as large, while in the US, it is less than 2%. It is easy to see the reverse correlation between the harshness of lockdown and a decline in retail sales.

On the other hand, production in China is gaining momentum much faster than in the US and the UK, which makes it much more difficult to answer the question of which government response is better for the economy.

The FxPro Analyst Team