October 2017 Canadian retail sales data

  • Prior was +0.1% (revised to +0.2%)
  • Estimates ranged from +0.1% to +0.6%
  • Ex autos +0.8% vs +0.4% expected
  • Prior ex autos was +0.3% (revised to +0.4%)
  • Sales up in 7 of 11 subsectors
  • Sales up 6.7% y/y and 4.9% ex-autos
  • E-commerce sales up 19.4% y/y but still accounts for just 2.6% of retail trade

New car sales were very strong, up 3.9% in the month but even cutting out some skews, sales were very strong.

One weak spot was 'furniture and home furnishings' which was down 0.9% in a sign of the cooling housing market.