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

Good afternoon, today is Thursday, August 15thth and I'm your host Kim Kahn.

The recession is imminent calls that dominated Wall Street last week are in Kaiser Soze fashion

gone just like that. A combo of a strong consumer indicated the

official retail sales figures and Walmart's results and unemployment claims

easing back juice stocks and Treasury yields. The NASDAQ is up 2% lead to the

S&P 500 which is up more than 1%. Both two-year and 10-year yields spiked with a

two-year back above 4.1% and the 10 year back at 3.95%.

While it's just one day of data and recession worries could return quickly,

today's numbers give the Fed some breathing room before Jackson Hole next week and put to bed any calls

for an emergency rate cut. The market odds of a cut of 50 basis points at the

September meeting tumbled down to 25% from around 45% in the previous session as the odds for a 25

basis point cut jumped to 75%. Retail sales rose 1% in July, resurging from a

0.2% slip in June, which was revised down from flat.

It handily topped expectations of up 0.3% helped by strong motor vehicle sales.

Raymond James, Chief Economist Eugenio Alaman, says, if these results are not changed in the

coming months, it is clear that the US consumer was alive and well at the start of the third quarter

of the year and that market overreaction several weeks ago

is not supported by economic conditions from the largest sector of the U.S. economy, the U.S. consumer.

Core retail sales, which excludes motor vehicles and parts, rose 0.4% month on month,

handily beating the 0.1% consensus.

The three-month annualized rate for the retail control group came in at 4.9%, which economist Joseph

...