It's Thursday, April 15th.

Welcome to Marketfoolery.

I'm Chris Hill, with me, from the financial capital of the United States of America.

It's Maria Gallagher.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks so much for having me.

We've got consumer goods, we've got apparel retail, but we are going to start today with

a little bit of the big macro.

The US Commerce Department reported that retail sales in March rose nearly 10 percent.

That was significantly higher than expected, and we can go in any direction you want here.

If you're looking by category sporting goods, clothing, food, and beverage, we're all

up significantly, and for anyone who was worried that people getting stimulus checks, we're

going to just put them in the bank.

Don't worry about that anymore, because it looks like they put them to work and they're

spending money.

Yeah, I think it's super interesting, so it's kind of a combo of factors, so you see those

easing of restrictions for states, those increasing vaccinations and pent up demand, and the

rollout of the third round of stimulus checks, all combined brought a really big jump in

retail sales in March, so bar and restaurant industry was up 13.5 percent sporting goods

spending, or hobby spending was up over 23 percent, clothing and accessories were up

almost 20 percent, and motor vehicle parts and dealers were up another 15 percent.

This is compared to in May of 2020, after the first round of stimulus checks, there was

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