It's Wednesday, February 17th.

Welcome to Marketfoolery.

I'm Chris Hill with me today, Mr. Bill Barker.

Good to see you.

Good to be here.

We've got hotel earnings.

Warren Buffett and his team have gone shopping.

We'll see what they've been buying.

And the shopping spree that they've gone on

leads nicely into the consumer spending numbers

from January that came out this morning.

Retail sales in January, up more than 5%,

particularly nice numbers for home furnishings,

home improvement, electronics.

It's only one data point, but it's a pretty bullish

data point for the US economy.

It is.

I don't know how much there is to add onto the data,

except it's something that points to good times.

Well, maybe not ahead.

In January, as a result, in part of the checks that went out,

and some people who got the $600 check from the government,

...