Figuring out holiday sales

Lots of luck. As usual, the preliminary numbers are being deciphered any number of ways. Here's the lede of Monday's WSJ story:

The final weekend of the holiday shopping season will likely bring a sigh of relief from many retailers who feared that sales would be weak.

The Journal cited ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which estimated a 3.6 percent increase in holiday sales. Now here's the lede of this morning's NYT holiday sales story:

American consumers, uneasy about the economy and unimpressed by the merchandise in stores, delivered the bleak holiday shopping season retailers had expected, if not feared, according to one early but influential projection.

The influential projection comes from MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company, which estimates that spending from Thanksgiving to Christmas rose 3.6 percent over last year, same as ShopperTrak. But MasterCard's view of 3.6 percent is more downbeat than ShopperTrak's assessment. Normally, none of this would be that big a deal, but 2007’s numbers are considered important because of concerns that sluggish consumer spending will push us into a recession. (Last year, sales were over 6 percent, so you can understand the concern.) By the way, the results do not take into account sales between now and the end of the year, which in recent years have tended to bump up the final figure. I'm still sticking with a passable but not great year.