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eToro said April\u2019s headline growth was partly driven by higher petrol prices.<\/strong><\/p>\n April retail<\/a> sales rose 5.4% YoY, but the headline growth may be masking softer consumer sentiment, according to eToro market analyst Zavier Wong.<\/p>\n Wong said the latest figures were encouraging at first glance, but petrol service stations accounted for a significant share of the increase.<\/p>\n Sales at petrol service stations rose 14.4% YoY, largely due to higher pump prices. Wong said pump prices surged to around $3.47 per litre in April as Middle East tensions pushed crude prices higher.<\/p>\n Discretionary spending held up reasonably well during the month. Sales of wearing apparel and footwear rose 7.8%, cosmetics and toiletries increased 6.2%, and watches and jewellery grew 6.4%.<\/p>\n Wong said demand for jewellery remained resilient despite elevated gold prices, as global uncertainty continued to support gold\u2019s appeal as a hedge.<\/p>\n However, routine spending categories showed signs of caution. Wong noted that food, alcohol, and department stores were either flat or down.<\/p>\n Food and beverage sales also pointed to softer demand, with growth slowing to 0.4% YoY from March.<\/p>\n Wong said the outlook for the second quarter will depend on energy costs and whether tariff-related uncertainty starts to affect employment and wages.<\/p>\n \u201cFor now, things look to be holding up. But the composition of this print suggests consumers are in a more fragile place than the headline implies,\u201d Wong said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n eToro said April\u2019s headline growth was partly driven by higher petrol prices. April retail sales rose 5.4% YoY, but the headline growth may be masking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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