Every country has a particular festival when their citizens spend money to enhance the festival. It can be related to birthday celebrations of the country or you can go to the card shop to see what future celebrations are coming up. When analysts examine the country one of the things they look for is a bump in the sales during festivals. In countries such as the US, consumer shopping accounts for 2/3s of the GDP, other countries try for a consumer society, but most are not near the US totals.

Economies evolve from agriculture based to manufacturing to services and as they evolve consumer spending becomes more important. One country where you can see the trends in the last 30 years is China. The country was agarin for centuries, then manufacturing moved into China and now as manufacturing moves to other countries, China is supporting the consumer society or how is it going?

In an article from the Associated Press, China had an online shopping festival known as 618. The festival runs from June 1 to June 18 or 618. The biggest retailers in China are JD.com and Alibaba as opposed to Amazon in the US. During the festival, Chinese e-commerce platforms offer discounts and incentives to consumers to buy stuff.

This year the festival results were weaker than pre pandemic levels. There were many reasons, but one reason is Chinese consumers have been price-conscious, looking for deals and trading down across most product categories.

Consumers bought cosmetics and luxury goods which had good sales because of the discounts.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all industries have events or festivals where sales tend to be higher than normal. The issue for investors is to know what and where the events are held for the industry and the results. If the results are very good, it is a reason to continue to hold onto your investments, if the results are soft, perhaps it is time to look for alternatives.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.