Retail Sales Lackluster

The U.S. Census Bureau came out today with advanced estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July. After adjusting for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences ( but not for price changes) , sales were 439.8 billion, virtually unchanged from the June and 3.7 percent above July 2013. Shares of the S&P Retail ETF XRT weakened on the news, and are trading at the lows of the day, down nearly 1 percent at 84.30.