Ken Perkins Gas Quotations

The numbers look pretty good so far. We are seeing more surprises to the upside and this is a nice reversal of the trend that we had expected last month. Even among those retailers who missed our forecast, not many of them blamed gas prices for it.

Consumers really felt the pinch of higher gas prices and job growth is stagnant.

Instead of hearing about gas woes, we actually saw a handful of companies raise their earnings estimates. That was a nice surprise.

The consumer has not run out of gas yet, provided the job market continues to remain fairly decent.

Clearly falling gas prices coupled with the late arrival of cooler weather in the last two weeks of October gave a boost to consumer spending.