The University of Michigan survey showed an improvement in consumer sentiment, hitting 70.2, exceeding forecasts of 68.0.

In wholesale, inventories have fallen to a 3 year low, indicating that there is little push to restock, though wholesale sales actually rose.

In retail, the fact that video game sales fell for the 6^th straight month is worrying: When consumers, specifically hard core video gamers, do not feel comfortable purchasing video games, they don’t feel comfortable purchasing anything.

Meanwhile across the pond(s), we have

Japan’s growth in Q2 being revised down to 2.3% from a 3.7% annualized rate, though domestic cargo volumes in Russian indicate a recovery is imminent there.

Meanwhile, in the folks with more petro-dollars than brains department, Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund, Istithmar World, has stopped making investments, probably because they are having problems covering their losses.

In real estate, repossessions dropped 12.7% in August, but foreclosure filings fell only 0.5% and the number of people defaulting.

My guess is that this is some of the banks out there are already overwhelmed with REOs and don’t want to acknowledge the bottom line hit, so they are letting things slide right now.

Oil falls below $70 on demand recovery doubts – Sep. 11, 2009:

Meanwhile crude oil finished the week below $70/bbl.

In currency, the dollar index, a basked of currencies against which the USD is measured, fell to a 1-year low, in the longest sting of losses in the index, 6 days, since March.

Finally, gold ended the day above $1000/ox (Troy), which might make for happy gold bugs, but I’m inclined to say that it is time to cash in and get Yen or Euro.