Retail Sales: release dates, results and history
Retail Sales last printed 1.2 on Wed, Sep 16, 2026 against a 0.8 consensus forecast and a -0.6 prior, a +1.25 standard-deviation surprise. The next release is Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 8:30 AM ET. Captured live by Helious the moment it printed.
Retail sales is the first hard read on the consumer each month, and the consumer is two-thirds of GDP. Traders mostly ignore the headline and go to the control group, which is retail sales with autos, gas, building materials and food services taken out. That line feeds straight into GDP consumption estimates. Leave those categories in and a swing in car sales or a move at the pump will often bury whatever the consumer actually did.
The trend
How it moves Treasuries
A strong control group sells Treasuries, because the GDP trackers get marked up on the back of it. In high-inflation months the print gets discounted. The data is nominal, so it is never adjusted for the price rises sitting inside it. See it scored live on the Helious desk, or read how the standard-deviation surprise is computed.
Recent prints, as captured by the desk
| DATE | ACTUAL | FORECAST | PRIOR | SURPRISE (SD) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | 0.8 | -0.6 | +1.25 | ABOVE FORECAST | |
| -0.6 | 0.1 | 0.2 | -2.19 | BELOW FORECAST | |
| 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.9 | 0.00 | ON THE SCREWS |
The 3 most recent prints from the desk's live capture, which began in July 2026, so what you see here is a sample rather than the whole record. Every row links the print page published the moment that number landed, and the full graded history is served by the API.
Official series history
| PERIOD | VALUE (% M/M) | PRIOR |
|---|---|---|
| +1.13% | -0.46% | |
| -0.46% | +0.2% | |
| +0.2% | +1.04% | |
| +1.04% | +0.59% | |
| +0.59% | +1.66% | |
| +1.66% | +0.87% | |
| +0.87% | -0.62% | |
| -0.62% | +0.11% |
These are the most recent official rows, and the chart above draws the longer series behind them. The desk-captured prints higher up the page carry the consensus forecast and the standard-deviation surprise as they stood the moment each number landed.
Related indicators
Monthly, ~mid-month for the prior month · 8:30 AM ET · download a sample (CSV, recent rows), free to cite with a link to this page. The full history comes through the Helious API and MCP at api.helious.io/mcp, with depth set by plan.