Dave Happe takes you deep into analysis of the Q4 2025 calendar and what impact that will have on 2026.
1. There is no October 2025 unemployment rate and there never will be. The survey was never conducted. October CPI was cancelled the same way. Two series that had run unbroken since 1948 and 1921 both stopped in the same month, and almost nobody noticed.
2. Your October real comparison needs a deflator that does not exist. Something in your system invented one, quietly, and then somebody committed inventory against it.
3. For most of November 2025, forty-two million people lost their food money. SNAP is about a tenth of grocery sales at retail, and better than half of it gets spent within a week of hitting the card.
4. Then twenty-seven billion dollars arrived at once, ten days before Thanksgiving. A hole in the first half of the month and a lump in the second, which means the November base is too low and part of December is too high from the same event.
5. Cyber Monday spent that year in December. It moved back into November this year by one day, so your November comp is about to look enormous and December soft, and neither is telling you anything about the consumer.
6. The whole quarter was priced off a tax that was not lawfully owed. Eighty-five billion in refunds is moving, and after a July ruling the older half goes only to importers who sued.
7. A statute dormant since 1930 just put a fifty percent duty on Canadian furniture, plywood, apparel and toys. USMCA provides no shelter. Go read Annex Two against your own tariff lines.
8. Nine calls with odds attached, including four that bet against the field. Holiday nominal above four and a half percent against a consensus near two point six. Outerwear needing markdown before December tenth. The new tariffs missing this quarter entirely and landing on spring.
9. Television has finished growing, and the quarter will look strong on the way down. Growth peaks at saturation, which is why the numbers look best right before the fall.
10. Ten questions to take to your team this week, ending with the only one that really matters: what does this customer buy from us next? If the answer is nothing, this is not a demand signal. It is the last good quarter.
