I love the headline game. Before the market opened today, the Associated Press told me stocks would be up. Half an hour after the ding-a-lings on Wall Street, and the major indices look pretty darn red. Last I checked, red was the bad color, and the culprit this morning seems to have been the advanced retail sales report from the commerce department.

June's 0.5% retail sales "drop" is "worse than expected" and all that, which always makes me wonder why anyone expects anything. The only thing surprising about these kinds of economic noise is that anyone, let alone an entire market, can feign surprise. Remember, these figures are often substantially revised in later months to more accurate numbers, but by then, no one cares.

I've been pretty bearish on the economy for a while now, which puts me in an unusual position today, because I see some good news in the report (or at least, some not-so-bad). But in order to see it, you need to take a look at the entire report -- something most investors (and reporters) won't take the time to do.

Let's start with the bad: Digging into the numbers a bit, you see that much of the drop from the prior month is owed to softer sales of cars, a decline in gasoline prices (something we all like to see) and a decline in spending on other big-ticket-related items. Drops in furniture and hardware sales, for example, seem to just follow the lead of the housing market, which is retracting because of lower levels of government subsidies. While I never rest an investment thesis entirely on macroeconomic news, the tough housing market and its ripple effects seem pretty reasons to be wary of the likes of Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Lowes (NYSE: LOW).

On the other hand, electronics and appliance stores posted yet another gain, 1.3% for the month and the strongest in the report. For some reason, even pinched consumers keep buying gadgets and computers -- something perhaps evidenced again yesterday by Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) blowout numbers. With Americans still spending on tech, the recent pullback in Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) looks like an invitation to buy.

Even department stores and clothing and apparel stores posted gains (1.1% and 0.6%, respectively), something I didn't expect to see. Maybe that recent same-store sales increase at Abercombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) wasn't so surprising after all, though if I have to pick a mall-based apparel chain these days, I prefer Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO), which is better positioned to maintain sales to teens who need lower price points to stay fashionable.