And yet, there's still a way for the pullback to stop before it gets started in earnest. We'll dissect that narrow path below, after taking a look at last week's key economic numbers.
There's no denying that the Fed's decision to hold the Fed Funds rate at 0.25% last week was "the" big news, but it's not the only economic news worth a closer look. We also heard last month's retail sales results, August's consumer inflation figure, and the number of housing starts and building permits the nation logged for last month.
Retail sales for August were up, but not as much as expected, and not up impressively. Economists were looking for overall growth of 0.3%, and we only saw growth of 0.2%. Taking automobiles out of the equation, retail sales growth of 0.1% fell short of the 0.2% growth the pros were calling for.