Friday, January 29, 2016

Consumer Confidence Surveys – As Of January 29, 2016

Doug Short had a blog post of January 29, 2016 (“Michigan Consumer Sentiment:  January Final Fractionally Below December“) in which he presents the latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence and Thomson/Reuters University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index charts.  They are presented below:
(click on charts to enlarge images)
Conference Board Consumer Confidence
University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment
There are a few aspects of the above charts that I find highly noteworthy.  Of course, until the recent sudden upswing, the continued subdued absolute levels of these two surveys was disconcerting.
Also, I find the “behavior” of these readings to be quite disparate as compared to the other post-recession periods, as shown in the charts between the gray shaded areas (the gray areas denote recessions as defined by the NBER.)
While I don’t believe that confidence surveys should be overemphasized, I find these readings to be very problematical, especially in light of a variety of other highly disconcerting measures highlighted throughout this site.
_____
The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 1926.42 as this post is written

No comments:

Post a Comment