Ahead of this week’s big macro event, Thursday’s retail sales report, Bank of America has, as is customary, released its own internal credit and debit card data. It’s downright ugly.

As BofA’s new chief economist Michelle Meyer writes, “as we know from the choppiness of the monthly data, we are due for a partial payback in 3Q. We already saw a weakening in July retail sales based on both the BAC aggregated card data and Census Bureau figures. Based on the BAC aggregated card data, retail sales ex-autos fell 0.1% mom SA in August, a payback from 2Q strength.”

The details, as per BofA, reveal that “the BAC aggregated card data showed that retail sales ex-autos declined 0.1% mom SA in August. This follows the 0.3% mom decline in July and pushes the 3-month average down to -0.2% mom.” The number would have been even worse if BofA had not decided to adjust out data from the recently bankrupt Sports Authority. As BofA writes, “there is a special factor to account for — we adjusted our data to control for the bankruptcy of Sports Authority, which officially shut stores this month. We expect the Census Bureau will do the same.” In other words, if one did not “adjust” the data for this factor, it would have been an outright disaster.

 Broken down by various component categories, BofA finds that within the components of the back-to-school composite, spending on teen retail and young adult clothing has performed poorly. Here BofA has seen “fairly consistent contraction in this category since 2012.This fits into the “apparel malaise” theme that BofA Merrill Lynch’s consumer equity analysts have noted. It also likely reflects the shift in consumer budgets towards greater spending on experiences, which is evident in relatively stronger spend at hobby stores, travel and restaurants.” It also means less spending on, well, non-experiences, which includes most goods and services.