Last week, chain-store sales came in pretty strong. But if you stripped out gasoline sales from Wal-Mart and Costco it really showed us that consumer spending had started to weaken on a fundamental level.

There is still a lot of momentum left in the job market.

The consumer has finally been shaken. If folks are unsure what the future is looking like over the next few months, they tend to hunker down and sit on cash, and that's not a good start to the holiday shopping season.

This data supports the idea that payrolls will be strong again in August. At some point employers are going to cut back on hiring if they can't pass along these higher energy prices. The fact that claims are still so low suggests that's not happening yet.

These discounts are too good to pass up. But we think that these are planned sales and not at the expense of retailers' profits.

Despite some of the house sales data it looks as if the market is going to look for a pretty robust rise in construction activity.