How you feeling?

I'll first start with Home Depot and then review for you how consumers and businesses are feeling and they are feeling not so hot. 

From Home Depot said in its earnings release, similar to what we heard in the prior quarter, "we saw continued consumer engagement with smaller projects, and experienced pressure in certain big ticket, discretionary categories." Customer transactions fell by 2.4% y/o/y and the average ticket was lower by .3%. 

I wasn't familiar with the new Financial Times and University of Michigan's new monthly poll of US consumers until I read the new results on the front page of the FT today. In the age old question going back to Ronald Reagan by him, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Actually three for this survey, only 14% said yes. The article went on to say, "Asked what was the source of their biggest financial stress, 82% said price increases." A professor at UoM followed this by saying "Every group - Democrats, Republicans and independents - list rising prices as by far the biggest economic threat...and the biggest source of financial stress."