Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, October 17th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far. A trifective macro reports that were soft landing friendly,

headlined by retail sales, are pushing Treasury yields higher.

September retail sales rose 0.4% from August,

topping the 0.3% consensus and accelerating from 0.1% prior.

On a year-over-year basis, retail sales climbed 1.7%.

Core retail sales, which exclude motor vehicles and parts, increased 0.5% month-on-month, topping

the 0.1% month on month topping the 0.1% consensus.

The control group, which excludes audios and gas and feeds into GDP, jumped 0.7% month on month

versus the 0.3% consensus. That's the biggest rise in three months and the

third largest monthly gain of 2024. Wells Fargo economists say that even

though retail sales have been choppy this year, there is an underlying theme that shows that the composition of spending, tending to favor those categories that feed into the Department of Commerce's GDP calculations.

The upshot is that despite hand-ringinging over the state of the labor market,

U.S. consumers just keep spending.

Speaking of the labor market, weekly initial jobless claims fell as expected to

241,000, although claims are still

seeing some impact from Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike. And the Philly Fed

manufacturing index for October rose more than anticipated to 10.3.

Overall, the data reinforced the belief that the Fed doesn't have to cut too rapidly.

While two quarter-point rate cuts for 2024 are still priced in,

the odds of a December cut fell below 80 percent, and

looking to next year the odds of a cut in March moved to a toss-up.

...