Retail sales growth has slowed down. What does it mean for the U.S. economy and the gold market? Retail sales increased 1.2 percent in July. The growth was worse than expected, which hit the U.S. stock market. As the chart below shows, the number was also much weaker than in the two previous months (8.4 percent gain in June and 18.3 percent jump in May), when it seemed that the economy started to rebound. Now, the weak July reading indicates that we have seen a false recovery. Or that it was brutally interrupted by the second wave of the coronavirus infections. Given that epidemic is still widespread (it seems that, ... (full story)