Asit Sharma

Not great for the consumer.

I think the

retail environment is fragile.

We see that buy now, pay later is being used increasingly for the discretionary side and the staple side.

People are using buy now, pay later in order to purchase groceries in some cases.

I think the consumer here, at least in the U.S.,

really feels stretched.

Now, there are pockets of affluence, and the affluence still are paying up for certain types of goods.

We've talked on the show about the success of On Holdings in recent years.

They're still selling into the strength of that brand.

But then, on the other hand, it's so uneven in the economy

I think that's a warning signal as we look ahead to 2026.

Now, the U.S.

consumer has shown an ability to endure a lot longer than I would normally predict.

But I do feel we're coming to a point where further gains in retail sales, so the ability of retailers to bring in traffic, to have a little bit of price increases that they can pass on, that is paper thin.

And in fact, the preliminary data that I saw this morning indicates a little bit that

those who are importing goods are absorbing, for now, some of that cost increase.

So that's impacting their bottom lines.

Yeah, this one is super hard to figure out.

We've had waves of this in the U.S.