Flat retail sales highlight K-shaped economy
Wall Street Breakfast
Seeking Alpha
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2026
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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Show Notes
Goldman Sachs Panic Index near ‘max fear’
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis. |
| 0:10.0 | Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, and I'm your host, Kim Con. Our top story so far, retail sales were flat in December, missing expectations for a 0.4% increase and slowing from 0.6% growth in November. |
| 0:23.7 | Sales were up 2.4% from a year ago. Core retail sales, excluding motor vehicles and parts, |
| 0:29.1 | were also flat versus forecasts for a 0.4% gain. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy |
| 0:34.5 | Federal Credit Union said, this is a K-shaped economy, with strong spending from the top, |
| 0:39.6 | and much more cautious spending for the middle and lower-income consumers. |
| 0:43.0 | She added the holiday season was solid but not spectacular, |
| 0:46.0 | with shoppers hunting for bargains, and buying early to grab discounts. |
| 0:49.8 | Overall, the consumer is still spending, Long said, |
| 0:52.5 | but this is the Costco economy for the middle class. Among weak categories, furniture and home furnishings, down 5.6% from a year ago, department stores were down 0.3% year-over-year, not great news for Macy's, Coles, Dillards. And non-store retailers rose just 0.1% month over month, though they were still up 5.3% year-over-year, |
| 1:11.6 | a slower pace for the category that includes Amazon, Etsy, Wayfair, and eBay. |
| 1:16.1 | Among active stocks, Coca-Cola is lower after missing Q4 revenue expectations. |
| 1:20.6 | The company sees full-year organic sales growth of about 4 to 5%, below the 5% consensus, |
| 1:26.0 | with EPS growth of 7-8%. |
| 1:27.9 | Datadog is rallying after beating Q4 expectations and issuing bullish Q1 guidance. |
| 1:33.4 | The cloud security and monitoring platforms sees first quarter 2026 revenue of about $956 million, |
| 1:39.7 | above the 934 consensus. |
| 1:41.9 | And Spotify is also higher after guiding above expectations for subscriber metrics |
| 1:45.8 | in the current quarter. For Q1, total MAUs are seen rising about 9 million to 759 million |
| 1:52.0 | above the 752.45 million consensus. In other news of note, Paramount Skydance sweetened its takeover |
| 1:59.2 | bid for Warner Brothers Discovery by adding |
| 2:01.4 | what's known as a ticking fee, paying Warner Bros. |
... |
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