Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Consumers Just Sent a Warning, and Markets Heard it | S3 E115 | 01-27-2026

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Consumers Just Sent a Warning, and Markets Heard it | S3 E115 | 01-27-2026 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: It's another volatile day for equity owners.
• 0:03
  Megan Horneman: It's Tuesday, January the 27th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:06
  Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, hit the alarm bell, share with your friends, family, or colleagues, anyone who wants to know about some of the data that's hitting the tape today that might have an impact on the market.
• 0:18
  Megan Horneman: And what we're seeing specifically is today is more about the economic data that's been released than it has been over recent days about the headlines with geopolitical tensions.
• 0:29
  Megan Horneman: Today it's all about consumer confidence.
• 0:31
  Megan Horneman: And the conference board released the data for the month of January.
• 0:34
  Megan Horneman: And what it showed that is consumer confidence fell to the lowest level since uh 2014.
• 0:42
  Megan Horneman: So a big drop in consumer confidence.
• 0:44
  Megan Horneman: Now, this is concerning because consumer confidence tends to have a correlation with consumer spending.
• 0:51
  Megan Horneman: Now, we've been on this podcast multiple different occasions showing how this has not necessarily come to fruition, but it is worth noting some of the components of this.
• 1:01
  Megan Horneman: When you look at the there's two main components.
• 1:04
  Megan Horneman: It's the the expectations for the future of the economy and then current conditions for the economy.
• 1:10
  Megan Horneman: Both of these indexes fell within the reading we got today, but the expectation component fell to the lowest level we've seen since April of 2025.
• 1:20
  Megan Horneman: And that's important because that was the month that we had a lot of pullback because of Liberation Day.
• 1:26
  Megan Horneman: The other thing the Fed will be looking at is the expectations about the job market.
• 1:32
  Megan Horneman: There's a ratio of jobs plentiful versus jobs hard to get.
• 1:36
  Megan Horneman: And that fell to the lowest level we've seen since February of 2021.
• 1:42
  Megan Horneman: So that means that people are not optimistic about the amount of jobs that are out there.
• 1:47
  Megan Horneman: This is concerning for the labor market.
• 1:50
  Megan Horneman: It tends to be a leading indicator for the labor market.
• 1:53
  Megan Horneman: But we will look to see if this continues on in the data that we'll get in the coming months.
• 1:58
  Megan Horneman: The equity markets are down big with this.
• 2:01
  Megan Horneman: It's one of many things that have contributed to some risk-off mentality just starting this year, whether it's been the geopolitical tensions, the big decline in the dollar, the mixed economic data, the fact that the Fed will meet tomorrow and most likely will not make any changes on interest rates.
• 2:18
  Megan Horneman: But this does have some concern about what this means for the first quarter when it comes to personal spending.
• 2:25
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 2:26
  Megan Horneman: We'll be back tomorrow.
• 2:27
  Megan Horneman: As we mentioned, the Fed will meet tomorrow and we'll come back with their comments and their direction on interest rates.
• 2:33
  Megan Horneman: Thank you so much.
• 2:34
  Megan Horneman: If you want a history of our podcast, go to marketswithmegan.fm.