As Goldman consumer discretionary trader Scott Feiler writes over the weekend, all year, a consumer spending slowdown has been a theory (if one which became far louder in the last week of March when we showed a sharp drop in the post-bank crisis consumer spending). Feiler lists that among the rising headwinds on the horizon listed have been

i) reduced SNAP benefits (end of February),

ii) lower tax refunds by double-digits y/y (mainly a March impact),

iii) revolving credit up to all-time highs, and

iv) unseasonably cool weather in March impacting home, outdoor and apparel.

Additional recent concerns have been the jobs angle (finally slowing) and the end of the student debt moratorium in June. Until very recently, these were only listed headwinds, with no notable slowdown to speak of. But, as the Goldman trader warns, "the slowdown moved from theory to reality the last 2 weeks, with the Costco update Thursday night which feels like a big focus, given they were the first major bellwether to call it out", and then others quickly joined:

It wasn't all bad news:

According to Goldman, the next catalyst to keep an eye on - at least until Friday's retail sales update - KMX is the only major consumer company to report this week and Goldman thinks expectations are for them to miss comp sales by about 500 bps and speak to a slow start to 1Q.

Finally, Feiler asks rhetorically "what are we seeing, who will be impacted" and answers "We have seen a very defensive playbook in consumer, with names like dollar-stores (DG/DLTR) and discounters/staples (WMT, PG) outperforming, vs a reduction in discretionary plays."

The silver lining in all this is that as the Goldman Prime Brokerage chart below show, positioning already largely reflects the consumer slowdown, with Discretionary positioning bumping along lows, vs Staples significantly net bought recently.