In this third blog post of our summer series, we review two different measures of economic activity that can help paint an overall picture of consumer trends. Measuring foot traffic at consumer discretionary businesses helps us understand the extent to which people are back to shopping for non-essentials - an indicator for increasing flexibility of movement and confidence in the outlook. During April and May there was a massive year-over-year drop in visits to non-essential locations.

In this second post based on data from our summer webinar, we reviewed the sectors at the heart of the tourism industry - hotels, restaurants and casinos. We had previously analyzed hotel foot traffic in multiple states. You can read our full analysis in a previous blog post here . Just to recap, in the majority of states hotel foot traffic remains well below average, pre-pandemic levels. The exception is South Carolina, where hotel traffic has returned to levels 5% above the start of the year.

Last week we hosted a webinar where we dug into some key data to help understand and predict trends for the travel and tourism sectors as we head into the summer. Since Europe was locked down earlier than North America, it has also started opening up sooner. As a comparison, we looked first at foot traffic in European airports to see whether there are any early signs of a pick-up in visitors coming into the peak holiday period.

In the past week, many states have started to see a resurgence in the number of COVID cases. In response to the need for more accurate data to monitor the pressure being placed on hospitals around the country, we have significantly enhanced our data on hospital admission. Our data is now more precise and, crucially it can also be broken down to show overnight stays over over 3 days to give a true picture of the number of beds being used.

As one of the sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, hotels, resorts and leisure facilities are hoping that the summer may offer a recovery in the form of reduced case numbers and fewer cancelled vacations. A critical period for the industry, a bounce back in July and August could help mitigate some of the losses from the past few months. Our analysis of foot traffic, using our Hotel, Resort and Leisure Index, shows a very mixed picture across different states.

Earlier this week we shared our global Sector Tracker that analyzes recovery trends by highlighting the sector with most week-over-week growth in each country. Last week, in the US, it was the transportation sector the had seen the biggest uptick in activity, based on our analysis of foot traffic at key locations. Since a significant share of traffic measured in this sector comes from airports, this is an indicator of an important trend for the travel industry.

The current and forthcoming earnings seasons will be one of the most unpredictable many of us have encountered. Anticipating and modelling sales performance will be challenging on multiple levels, given massive disparities across the country in terms of store openings and closing. With the ability to monitor daily foot traffic at every store in the country, Advan’s location data provides the unique ability to identify which stores are open or closed in almost real time.

Those of us based in the US and particularly in hard-hit states like New York have been keeping a close eye both on news about reopening our states, and on infection rate data across the country, to help us understand what the coming months may look like. Around the world, countries are very different stages of infection and recovery. For investors there are lessons to be learned from around the world given the different timelines and approaches for managing the pandemic, and varying strategies for recovery.

Building on previous posts from Advan Research and Eigen10 Advisors using anonymized cell phone movement over time to analyze the impact of Covid-19 on various real estate property segments, this week we explore the different experiences metro areas have had returning to the office. The market areas were chosen to represent a cross-section of the country, which had their own set of stay in place orders, and in turn, timing of a return to work.

With a decrease in social distancing measures across most states, and markets reaching record highs, the past couple of weeks had felt like a tentative breakthrough after months of lockdown and uncertainty. Yet news from the Fed today that they would hold rates steady for the foreseeable future and another heavy week for jobless claims led to a 5% drop in the Nasdaq. The fall of 1,400 points sent stocks towards their worst day for markets since mid-March.