UoM confidence, lowest since May

The preliminary November UoM consumer confidence index fell to 60.4 from 63.8 and where the estimate was for little change at 63.7. That’s the weakest since May with both the Current Conditions and Expectations components lower m/o/m. Inflation worries are clearly apparent as the one yr expectation for inflation rose to 4.4% from 4.2%, the most since April and the 5-10 yr guess was up 2 tenths m/o/m to 3.2%, the highest in 12 years. To this, the mean percentage of those that expect their income to exceed inflation in the coming 5 years fell to 33.7%, the lowest since July 2022. If you take away Covid, that’s the softest since 2014. Like I said the other day, only Wall Street and the Fed live on rate of change while the average consumer is trying to manage a 20% rise in their cost of living as measured by CPI over the past few years and add much higher interest rates on top of that for those that have debt.

This of course mostly impacts that lower end income consumer while the upper end is excited by the higher stock market which means that the recession debate needs to include ones view of the stock market.