USA stock market daily report by Millenium Traders (August 13, 2009, Thursday) 

After two months of gains retail sales reports show a drop of 0.1% in July compared to a gain of 0.8% in June, economists expected a rise by 0.6%. Sales excluding automobiles and auto parts reported an unexpected drop of 0.6% after a gain of 0.5% in June, economists were predicting a gain of 0.3%. Retail king "Wal-Mart" posted a surprising loss of 1.2% in second-quarter same store sales, however shares of Wal-Mart continued to gain, rising 88 cents per share for the quarter. Departments store sales fell 1.6%, including Target, who posted a decline of 0.6%, which is a little surprising after Macy's released they made profits in the second quarter "Consumers continued to maintain a tight hold on their wallets, worried about rising unemployment, falling home prices and tight credit," Steven Wood, president of Insight Economics, told Bloomberg News. "Overall economic activity will not fully revive until consumer spending rebounds." More bad news was reported when the Labor Department released that jobless claims rose by 4,000 to 558,000 week ending August 8th, experts expected claims to fall to 543,000. Although jobless claims reports were not so uplifting, the number of people continuing to collect benefits fell 141,000 to 6.2 million week ending August 1st to it's lowest level since April.