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Retail sales data topping economists expectations during September, rising four tenths of a percent month over month, according to the census bureau showing consumers are still spending, even as high prices remain sticky in some areas. Joining me now, we've got Sucharita Kodali, who is the retail analyst over at Forester research. Great to have you back on the program with us, Sucharita. Let's let's start with the sectors, perhaps, that saw the most spending, the miscellaneous stores, clothing stores, personal and personal care stores, health and personal care stores, I should say. Why are those seeing the most gains right now from from your perspective?

Well, the ones that are actually the highest are some of those non-store retailers, mass merchants. Um, it is companies that are like Amazon, Walmart, multi category, multi brand, value focused retailers that tend to be doing the best. Apparel certainly has recovered from its pandemic depths. So we're seeing a little bit of, I would say, green shoots there that should carry into 2025. Um, but the sectors that are doing the weakest are definitely home related. So anything that is related to furniture, um, some of the building do it yourself types of retailers. Those are the sectors that are seeing softness and large part because interest rates are still high.

And so with that in mind, and you mentioned and ran through some of those sectors seeing the the declines last month, electronics, gas, furniture. I mean, some of that's continuation of what we would expect or what we already have seen. What what does that tell you more broadly about the consumer and how that also is is something that they're monitoring within the rates as well, as you were mentioning that a moment ago, and the impact into those specific categories.

Well, the consumer certainly is still very cautious, um on average. So certainly there are the tale of two types of consumers. You have affluent consumers who are, um, experiencing some of the highest stock market valuations that they have seen ever. Um, and those are consumers that tend to continue to spend. You still are seeing things like eating out, um food away from home to be relatively resilient. Um, on the other hand, the consumer that is struggling, the consumer with loans or the consumer that is in a lower income demographic, they may be working multiple jobs, they are absolutely pulling back and that's why you see, um, stores like, for instance, the dollar channel struggling a little bit in in this economy. So the consumer certainly is still cautious, um, and when you look overall at year to date, um spend levels, they are about in line with inflation, which means the units being purchased is not higher.