{"id":436959,"date":"2026-08-26T21:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/the-canadian-consumer-isnt-cracking-yet-but-the-momentum-is-fading-436959\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T21:00:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:00:06","slug":"the-canadian-consumer-isnt-cracking-yet-but-the-momentum-is-fading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/the-canadian-consumer-isnt-cracking-yet-but-the-momentum-is-fading-436959\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canadian consumer isn’t cracking yet, but the momentum is fading"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Scotiabank published its NielsenIQ Omnishopper and the headline number is a deceleration: consumer spending growth ran at +6.1% y\/y in the four weeks to July 11. That’s down from +8.1% in May and +7.1% in June. The trailing 12-week figure dipped to +6.4% from +7.1% a month ago.<\/p>\n

They say it’s a “slight negative,” with caution heading into the September reporting season.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly not a collapse as the first quarter averaged roughly the same pace, so on a year-to-date view nothing has broken. But May and June were the high-water mark and the trend since is slipping. When you’re looking at nominal spending growth, the important question is how much of that 6% is price and how much is volume. Given where grocery and fuel costs have been sitting, the volume story underneath is thin.<\/p>\n

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“We expect investors to approach CQ3 and the Sept reporting season with caution for some Canadian consumer stocks,”\u00a0 Scotia writes.<\/p>\n

Scotia also highlights soem winners and losers with money trending towards Amazon, Costco and Dollarama. The laggards have been grocery stores Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys and Walmart. <\/p>\n

That squares with what the reported numbers show. Walmart put up +6% Canadian same-store sales last week for roughly CQ2. Costco did +5% in Canada in June and July \u2014 slower than its own history, but still ahead of most of the field.<\/p>\n

In last week’s earnings, Walmart flagged a weaker consumer backdrop than earlier in the year and specifically called out incremental pressure from higher fuel prices \u2014 and the stock got taken out back for a double-digit percentage decline. Yet the Canadian business inside that same print showed “strong momentum in food and consumables.”<\/p>\n

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Home Depot described its Canadian results as “fabulous,” with traffic and ticket both positive. TJX saw +6% Canadian comps and hammered the value theme. Dick’s was more negative. Target and Lowe’s landed in the middle, with Lowe’s describing consumers as healthy but choosing caution because of fuel prices and geopolitical uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Healthy but cautious. That’s the whole story in three words.<\/p>\n

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scotiabank published its NielsenIQ Omnishopper and the headline number is a deceleration: consumer spending growth ran at +6.1% y\/y in the four weeks to July 11. That’s down from +8.1% in May…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}