Despite the Dow Jones Industrial Average being down over 8 percent-year to date; the NASDAQ down over 13 percent so far this year and the S&P 500 down over 8 1/2 percent, Americans are spending money on retail goods. Consumer discretionary spending gained more than 2 percent to lead the S&P 500 higher today. The U.S. Commerce Department said that core retail sales, (which exclude cars, gas, building materials and food services) increased 0.6 percent last month after a 0.3 percent decline in December. Today’s gains on Wall St. came despite another 40 cent drop in the price of oil which closed at $29.04 a barrel.
See more from CNBC below as to why the markets turned positive today.
Here are the final numbers from Tuesday, 2/16/16 on Wall Street
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,196.41 (+222.57 / +1.39 %)
NASDAQ: 4,435.96 (+98.44 / +2.27 %)
S&P 500: 1,895.58 (+30.80 / +1.65 %)
