It's not just sofa sales that are sagging: shoppers are growing uncomfortable | Nils Pratley

Retailers such as DFS have predicted tumbling profits as real pay falls and consumers’ spending power is squeezedIt is rarely wise to read too much into a sofa retailer’s view of the trading outlook. Furniture and carpet stores have always seemed peculiarly vulnerable to hot weather, cold snaps, late Easters and most other supposed plagues of the shopkeeping game.All the same, DFS’s warning that it will miss full-year operating profit forecasts – it now expects £82m