Outright fabrication by the National Retailers Federation

NRF: WASHINGTON--(Business Wire)--The National Retail Federation today lowered its retail sales forecast for 2014 because of slow growth recorded during the first half of the year, but said sales are expected to grow significantly faster over the next five months. NRF forecasted in January that retail sales would grow 4.1 percent in 2014 over 2013, but today’s revision lowers the forecast to 3.6 percent.

This is called fabrication to keep their stock price high.  Customers in the store have fallen, there has been an outright decline in the number of sales. So, how do they get sales figures up? By closing unprofitable product lines and shrinking the number of stores.  They more than make up for the lost sales by forcing out their fellow competitors.  In other words, they will contract and the total value of retail stocks will drop and the remaining players will have higher profit margins.  Will the retail stock investor figure this out? Who knows, watch retail stock values.