Hope for holidays

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By Cotten Timberlake and Rich Miller BLOOMBERG NEWS

From Intel Corp. to TJX Cos., it's beginning to look a lot like the retail holiday season will be happier than forecast.

Intel, the world's biggest chip maker, cited stronger consumer demand in projecting last week that its sales in the fourth quarter would be $9.7 billion to $10.5 billion, compared with a $9.5 billion average prediction in a Bloomberg News survey.

TJX, operator of clothing store chains T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, also raised its fourth-quarter sales estimate to a gain of 3 percent to 5 percent from an increase of 2 percent to 4 percent.

Pier 1 Imports Inc., the Fort Worth, Texas, retailer of imported furniture, said sales at stores open at least a year increased 9.9 percent last month.

"Consumers' bunker mentality is gradually giving way to more familiar spending patterns," said Michael Feroli, a former Federal Reserve official who is now an economist at JPMorgan Chase in New York.

Rising sales would be good news for the economy as well as retailers. Consumption accounts for about 70 percent of gross domestic product, so more spending helps the recovery.

UBS Securities in New York improved its outlook for third-quarter growth to 3.5 percent from 2.5 percent after last week's report on September retail sales came in higher than expected.

GDP fell 0.7 percent in the second quarter; it was the fourth consecutive decline, which would be the longest since such records began in 1947.

"Retail sales offer the most encouraging sign of a more lasting turn in activity," Robert DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup Global Markets in New York, said Friday in a note to clients.

He sees the U.S. economy growing about 2.75 percent in the second half of this year and about 3.25 percent in 2010.