Despite a stronger-than-expected holiday selling season, U.S. retail executives are looking at the broader picture for the coming year and appear to be approaching 2005 with a bit of caution. According to the latest findings of the NRF Executive Opinion Survey, a monthly index by the National Retail Federation, the short-term outlook is more guarded than the long-term view, a reflection of concern over the ability to anniversary the strong retail sales numbers from early 2004.

The Retail Sector Performance Index (RSPI) for December was just barely in positive territory, off 160 basis points from December’s reading, and down nearly 15 full points from January last year. The Index, or RSPI, measures retail executives’ evaluations of a number of core retail performance metrics and is based on a scale of 0.0% to 100.0, with 50.0 equaling normal.

The Pricing Index was up 210 basis points for the month to a reading of 25.0, but it still indicates a real concern over the ability to maintain higher prices versus last year’s reading of 41.7 points. While the attitude over inventory health has declined over the last few months, the January reading is still nearly 10 full points higher than the year-ago reading.

The biggest drop came in the Customer Traffic number, which declined 830 points from the December reading and down about 18 full points from last year’s January reading. Surprisingly, the Sales reading grew for the month, reversing a the relationship between the two readings for December, when stores saw more traffic produce less sales.

While the Demand Outlook grew a bit and stayed in positive territory, it was still down very sharply from the very positive long-term outlook last year when the Demand Outlook produced a reading of 75.0 points.