Lots of retail earnings out this week have paint a mixed picture of the US consumer.  While the miss from Tiffany and Estee Lauder are more of an indictment of their non US business, the earnings bomb from Williams-Sonoma suggests upper end American consumers either have everything they need, or are indeed pulling back.  

Over the past couple of years, the store has become the target of ridicule in the annual ‘Haters Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog.’

In 2014, the guide to issue with a $2,500 espresso machine

Breville Oracle Espresso Machine ($1,999.95 – "New Special Value: Save $500")

Oh, well, if it textures my milk for me, I'm all in. I wanna meet the couple (and it has to be a couple) who share such an obsession with coffee that they need to drop two grand on a NASA-designed espresso spaceship that grinds every burr to a precise atomic measurement and heats up your coffee cup to a temperature that was calibrated using advanced fractals.

I think the problem for retailers and the economy is there are too few couples that could afford to be so obsessed.  Yet, on the other end of the spectrum, dollar stores missed Wall Street consensus and offered guarded guidance.

I should note that Dollar Tree and Dollar General have been juggernaut stocks and perhaps the best proxies for the slow-go recovery, considering Dollar Tree is up 178% in the past five years alone.

DLTR

One bright spot has been clothing retail. This morning, Burlington Coat Factory crushed consensus as its off-price strategy continues to work.  Last night, Philip Van Hussein posted strong results along with Tommy Hilfiger +7% and Calvin Klein +15%.  Hey, maybe people are buying the kind of clothes worn at better paying jobs - the kind that affords $2000 espresso machines.