With another Christmas in the books and New Year’s on the horizon, some have already begun to wonder just how the holiday shopping season fared this year. The word out of payment processor Mastercard (NYSE:MA) was better than some might have expected but not good enough to pull Mastercard out of a fractional decline in Tuesday afternoon’s trading. Indeed, spending, excluding automotive, was up 3.1% compared to this time last year, based on word from Mastercard’s SpendingPulse preliminary figures.
However, the bad news is that the SpendingPulse figures are not adjusted for inflation. That means that the core PCE inflation figure—which was up 3.2% against the same time last November—pretty much swamped the gains. Nevertheless, Mastercard’s chief economist, Michelle Meyer, noted that the “…economic backdrop remains favorable with healthy job creation and easing inflation pressures.”
