Name: Why Consumer Confidence Is Falling: Clues in the Latest Conference Board Report
Uploaded: 2024-03-26T16:07:00Z
Duration: 12 min 43 s
Description: The latest consumer confidence report shows confidence fell again after a decline in February that upended a rebound to end 2023. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin takes a look at the date showing consumers so far in 2024 have lost confidence and slowed spending. Photo: Frederic J. Brown

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The latest consumer confidence report shows confidence fell again after a decline in February that upended a rebound to end 2023. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin takes a look at the date showing consumers so far in 2024 have lost confidence and slowed spending. Photo: Frederic J. Brown

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Why Consumer Confidence Is Falling: Clues in the Latest Conference Board Report

Hey everyone. Welcome to "Market Takes". I know you could have been anywhere in the world, but you're here with me. I appreciate that. I'm Dion Rabouin, reporter at the "Wall Street Journal". Today we are digging into the "Consumer Confidence Report" from the Conference Board. It's a really interesting report today that's not showing a lot of good things. I think it contrasts a bit of what we're seeing in the markets, but we're gonna dig into all that. We are gonna talk about, first of all, what this latest "Consumer Confidence Report" showed, how that compared to expectations. We're gonna talk about some of the big picture takeaways from this report, where we can go from here, and what we can do with this information. We're also gonna talk about the details within the report. I thought there were some very interesting things within this report. We're gonna dig into those a little bit, not just the big headline numbers, but what some of the little details talked about. We talk about the current state of markets. A lot of stuff in here I think relates pretty directly to markets. So we'll talk about that. And then of course, we will talk about what comes next because here at "Market Takes", we are always looking forward, even though it is backward looking data. So let's get right into it. First of all, let's throw a chart up here on your screen so you can see what I'm seeing in terms of consumer confidence. Now this is a 10 year chart of consumer confidence going back to March of 2014. As you can see, we're just not back to where we were in that sort of post global financial crisis, pre-pandemic period. You see those ratings rising up around 120 to 140. Solid confidence for a couple years. We kind of got back there in 2021 and then really confidence just fell off a bit of a cliff going into 2022. It's been trying to get back to those levels, which just hasn't. Anytime consumer confidence kind of starts to pick up, it comes back down again and that's what we saw in this report. So March's consumer confidence report 104.7, that was expected to be 107 after 106.7 in February. But again, you can see we are just moving lower the past couple months after picking back up really to start the year. And this just illustrating the way that consumer confidence hasn't been able to get back and get a solid toehold and folks just really getting that consistent confidence to do some of the things that you do when you're a particularly confident person. The report showed weakening consumer sentiment. Let's talk about the present sentiment index, that actually rose to 151. It was 147.9 the month before and up from 147.6 in February. So what people are thinking about how they feel right now, how things are going right now in terms of your job, your financial situation, how you feel about making the purchases you need to, folks are feeling pretty good and actually feeling more confident than they were the previous month, but what's declining is the expectation index, the forward looking index. How do you feel about how things are gonna be six months from now? That actually declined to 73.8. It was expected to rise to 79.8. So last month was 76, this month dropped to about 74, was expected to be about 80. Not only we are we moving in the wrong direction, but we're missing expectations. So economists had predicted just based on everything happening in the economy, that folks would be more confident. In fact, it turns out they're less confident and particularly that confidence is going away about the future, about six months, going about six months in the future. Consumers feeling pretty good about right now, but not so great. And that can have an impact on those big ticket purchase items. Things like homes, cars, you know, those things that you're gonna put a big investment on, particularly if you're gonna finance, washing machines, dryers, all that sort of stuff. On a six month basis, the survey said that buying plans for interest rate sensitive items like autos, homes, big ticket appliances, that dipped again, however, based on a supplemental question, planned spending for services. So what folks are saying is, "I don't think I'm gonna have "the money to go out and buy, you know, a new washer, "a new dryer to, you know, maybe renovate the house, "buy a couch, things like that, buy a car. "But I think I will be spending more money on healthcare, "motor vehicle services, the price of insurance "has just been skyrocketing over the past couple years, "lodging for personal travel, but less on entertainment." That was particularly interesting. So folks are saying, "I think I'm gonna have to spend "a lot more on things that I have to buy, "things like healthcare, but I'm not gonna be able "to make big ticket purchases and I'm also not gonna be able "to spend on entertainment. "I'm not gonna be able to spend on the things that I want." And that really aligns with some of the trends that we've seen in other data. Wanna throw another chart up here on your screen in terms of what we've seen from the retail sales report, going back to this, this is the beginning of 2021. So you see just those huge pickups from the pandemic in 2021. 2022 we kind of moderated, had solid spending and then into 2023 you really saw retail sales almost go negative, but not quite and what we've seen to start 2024 is end of 2023 looked like it was picking up, like we were gonna get back into that solid spending from early 2022 and 2023 but we've gone the opposite way over the last couple months. And you can see that there from those last two months in March in, or sorry, in January, February, March in 2024, those numbers have been pretty weak and sorry, January and February of 2024. And this just illustrating that again, consumers aren't feeling confident and so they're not going out and spending. We saw consistently low consumer confidence and consumer sentiment readings in 2022 and 2023, but folks were still going out and buying, they were still spending big. What we have started to see to start this year is that has not been the case. Folks are saying, "I don't feel really great "about what's happening." And we're also seeing that cooling in spending, again, we're not going negative, we're not seeing, you know, declines in spending month over month or the year over year numbers. But what we are seeing is a decline in terms of what folks are spending in 2024. The other big piece of this is inflation, the Conference Board's "Consumer Confidence Survey" report, and hearing folks talking again about food and gas prices, about the increased cost that people are paying. Let's throw a chart up here on your screen so you can see CPI, what's been going on with inflation. And as you see there, you know, we rise to that high level in the middle of 2022 and then consistently downwards. And then again, starting late 2023, we start picking up, inflation's picking up again around that 3% level, not getting to 2%, which is what the Federal Reserve wants to see and what you know, you and I want to see. You wanna see inflation coming back down, getting closer to 2% rather than 3%. But as you see up there on your screen, inflation has just really been stuck around 3%. What's also interesting is the Conference Board survey found that consumers are expecting 12 months, as in one year ahead, inflation to be 5.3%. That actually went up from expectations in February, last month, which was 5.2. So really, even though inflation's been stuck around 3%, consumers are saying they still expect inflation to be over 5% over the next year, which is not showing a lot of confidence in this ability for the FED to get inflation to 2%. And this chart here just illustrates again that consumers, even though inflation's down at three are expecting inflation to be around 5%, that's very interesting. It's forward showing some growing worry about what could be coming. Really quickly, let's throw a quote up here from the report so you can just see directly what the Conference Board said. "Expectations for the next six months actually dropping "to the lowest since October of 2023." Now that that wasn't a huge decline, but again, that's six months ago, where expectations were. So expectations have kind of steadily picked up a little bit. But what we had seen is that, again, we've declined now and what folks are saying about, again, this expectations index, ask people, "What do you think about the next six months? "Are you feeling confident about business conditions, "about the labor market? "Do you feel like you can get a job about income? "Do you feel like you're gonna be making more money?" Those all deteriorated in March. And consumers were also a bit less optimistic about their family's financial situation, both now and in the future. And this quote just illustrating the overall sentiment, which is that folks aren't feeling particularly confident. They're saying, "Right now I feel like things "are pretty good, but I don't know that things "are gonna continue to get better. "And I feel like maybe over the next six months "things are going to deteriorate." Listen, we saw the durable goods report decline 6% the last reading. We've seen that retail sales report, which we saw the chart of up on your screen, we've seen that decline. And so what we are seeing is folks kind of starting to pull back on some of those big ticket items, the kind of things you have to finance, right? Because rates have been particularly high, it really does feel like that's starting to bite consumers. We know a lot of folks in the US locked in those low mortgage rates around three, three point half percent. That's what the majority of Americans are paying. And so I think folks were okay with these rising credit card rates. They were okay with rising auto loan rates. But now we are starting to see more delinquencies on credit cards. We are starting to see more auto loan delinquencies. And I think what people are saying is, "Wow, these rates "are really high. "This is adding a lot more payments, a lot more money "to my payment that I'm expecting to make." And that's starting to have an impact on their psychology. When folks were asked in the consumer confidence survey by the Conference Board about stock prices, sentiment about stock prices over the year ahead, that's continued to strengthen the Conference Board said in this report. The share of consumers expecting an increase in interest rates over the year, actually though, has risen above 50% for the first time since November, 2023. So if you remember November, 2023, we were still in this place of is the Federal Reserve gonna raise rates? Is you know, our Jay Powell and company gonna have to raise rates to tamp down inflation even more. Now, right now the market investors are expecting rate cuts, but what we're seeing from this report is that the general public, they're feeling like rates are actually gonna go higher, that costs are actually gonna keep rising for them. And I think that's really weighing on consumer sentiment and consumer confidence right now, keeping that down because I think folks are really starting to say, "Okay, when are these high rates gonna go away? "I'm not seeing any signs that I'm gonna be paying less "for my credit card that, you know, if I finance, you know, "a car right now, if I go out and buy a used car, "if I get some new furniture, if I have to, you know, "put some money down and pay monthly for a new washer, "dryer, things like that, those costs are gonna come down." And it seems like it's starting to affect the psyche or get into the confidence that folks are feeling right now. And so I think that's particularly interesting and we're gonna wanna watch that going forward. So what are we looking at for the rest of this week and over the next couple weeks? Well, we got the corporate profits report, that's coming out on Thursday, March 28th. You're gonna wanna watch that because I think that's gonna give us a lot of insight into how corporations did last year to end the year. There was some pretty solid earnings reports, but we have seen weakening revenues and corporations aren't selling as much stuff. They're not making as much sales, but they're still able to churn out that profit. And a good bit of that comes with the fact that corporations are raising prices above the actual increase in inflation. We'll get a chance to see just how much that was in this corporate profits report. I'll talk to my man, Deepak Puri from Deutsche Bank on this week's "Take on the Week" podcast. Check that out wherever you get your podcast. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But we talked about the corporate profits report, if you're gonna look for that, Deepak gave us some really good information on what to look for. Also, we got the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. That is also out on Thursday. That gives you a bit more of an idea of how consumers are feeling. This report from the confidence board is really more about how do you think business is doing? How do you feel about getting a job? Consumer sentiment is a bit more about how do you feel? Do you feel good about your economy or do you feel good about your household and the global, or sorry, the the overall economy here in the US. How are you feeling? How are you doing? So we'll hit we'll hear from them on Thursday and get that report. PCE, the personal income and outlays report, that is out on Friday. That's gonna give us our next read on inflation. That will be big. And then the jobs report on Friday, April 5th. We hope you'll be right here for "Market Takes". That's next Friday. We'll be breaking that all down, 10:00 AM Eastern time. So listen, for more, check out my podcast, "WSJs Take on the Week". We cut through the noise to explain the major business and financial news that moves markets. Also, you can make smarter investing decisions. Check that out wherever you get your podcast. That's "WSJs Take on the Week", hosted by me, yours truly, Dion Rabouin. Listen, that's gonna do it for us here on "Market Takes". Thank you all so much for being with us. We hope you join us when we do it again next time.

Why Consumer Confidence Is Falling: The Latest Conference Board Data

Dion Rabouin breaks down all things finance, taking a deep dive into what’s making money move and why it matters.

Why Consumer Confidence Is Falling: The Latest Conference Board Data

Dion Rabouin

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