BofA (w/e 7 Nov) Total Card Spending +5.1% Y/Y (prev. +6.2%); spending growth remains healthy but has slowed, likely due to a moderation in gas prices

BofA (w/e 7 Nov) Total Card Spending +5.1% Y/Y (prev. +6.2%); spending growth remains healthy but has slowed, likely due to a moderation in gas prices.

BofA's weekly card spending series sits in the high-frequency alternative data tier that desks watch between the official prints; its value historically has been as an early read on the consumption side of retail sales and PCE rather than as a market mover in its own right. A deceleration attributed to gasoline prices is the benign variant: lower pump prices mechanically compress nominal spending while leaving real volumes and discretionary categories untouched, so the distinction between a price effect and a demand slowdown is what determines the read-through. Past episodes where nominal card data softened on energy disinflation have tended to be corroborated later by the split between nominal and real retail sales, with the control group print the arbiter. The follow-ons are the composition detail in the full note, particularly services versus goods and the lower-income cohort breakdown the bank has published, and how the weekly series runs against the next official consumption releases. As a single-bank sample it carries a composition bias toward its own cardholder base, a caveat that has mattered when its signal has diverged from competitor aggregates.