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Investing

Valentine’s Day Spending Up 8.5%–NRF

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

The National Retail Federation say Valentine’s Day spending will bu up 8.5% to a record $17.6 billion. The study has been conducted for 10 years. If the number is right, it would show that consumer spending continues to hold its own. There could be several reasons for that. One is that unemployment is down. Another is an overall rise in consumer sentiment, at least based on a number of national surveys for firms like Gallup and the Conference Board. Still another may be the extension of tax cuts into 2012.

The NRF reports that

The survey also found the average male is expected to spend $168.74 on clothing, jewelry, greeting cards and more this year – nearly twice as much as women who are expected to spend an average of $85.76.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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