A 1.7% Print, a 0.14% Tell
Lighthouse Macro | The Beam | April 21, 2026
Retail sales surged. The service line didn’t.
March retail sales rose 1.66% month over month, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year, and twelve of the report’s thirteen categories were green. The control group, the measure that feeds directly into GDP, climbed 0.76% against a 0.2% consensus. Bloomberg ran it as broad-based resilience. Benzinga ran it as consumers shrugging off the pump shock. The tape bought the number early, then gave most of it back into the close.
Headlines did their job. The composition is where the story actually lives.
