Retail sales surprisingly slowed to 3.0% YoY in November, down from October’s stronger-than-expected 4.8% YoY. This was the big disappointment of the month, as retail sales failed to build upon the momentum and came in well softer than both consensus and our forecasts.

We continued to see the beneficiaries of trade-in policies perform strongly in November, with household appliances slowing to a still impressive 22.2% YoY, and auto sales up to a 9-month high of 6.6% YoY. Amid the transition to electric vehicles, petroleum & related products (-7.1%) continued to see soft sales growth.

Discretionary consumption outside of these categories remained soft. Cosmetics (-26.4%), communications appliances (-7.7%), gold & jewelry (-5.9%), as well as garments (-4.5%) all remained well in negative territory. 

We also saw the “eat, drink, and play” theme which has solidly outperformed for most of the year start to fade, with catering (4.0%), alcohol and tobacco (-3.1%), and sports & recreation (3.5%) softening to around or below the headline growth rate.

A silver lining was seen in furniture sales, which rebounded to 10.5% YoY, the highest level of the year. This uptick of the last two months add another signal for the property market recovery.

Household confidence clearly remains soft, and it remains to be seen if the “vigorous support” for consumption promised next year will be effective in stimulating a recovery. We expect the rollout of supportive policies could take some time, but overall retail sales growth should recover in 2025.