It's Thursday, February 3rd, and this is Market Foolery.

I'm Chris Hill and joining me in studio today from Motley Fool Hidden Gems, Charlie Travers,

from Income Investor James Early, and from Motley Fool Asset Management Bill Barker.

Guys, good to see you.

Good to see you, Chris.

All right, we've got cleaner air in New York City and we've got overwhelming optimism

from Kodak CEO, but we're going to begin today with some

strong retail earnings limited posted much better than expected earnings and the

stock was up sharply today also beating expectations zumies wet seal and the much-melined gap, or at least it's

much-melined in this studio.

Charlie Travers, what's going on with the retailers?

Oh yes, Chris, I'll be the first to admit that I've been bearish on the U.S. consumer for the past few years

with high unemployment and spending restrained coming out of the recession, but the numbers we're seeing

over the past month are saying that the

U.S. consumers a lot stronger than analysts thought and that I thought personally.

So what we're seeing across the board, first from the credit card companies

Visa, Mastercard, and Amex is that U.S. consumer

spending is very strong.

And then when we take that over to the retail side of the equation, it's not surprising that

these numbers are up across the board, and I think they did all plus four comps in January with the limited

Reporting particularly surprising results James if is you a consumer really stronger or just dumber I mean if these numbers are coming from visa and amex

if we're just spending more on our credit cards uh you know we think that the the

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