Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Nasdaq Enters Correction? What’s Next? | S3 E131 | 03-27-26

Transcript

Nasdaq Enters Correction? What’s Next? | S3 E131 | 03-27-26 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: Consumers are rounding out this first quarter of 2026 on a pretty somber note if you look at the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey.
• 0:08
  Megan Horneman: It's Friday, March 27th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:12
  Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, hit the alarm bell.
• 0:15
  Megan Horneman: You can share it with friends, family, colleagues.
• 0:18
  Megan Horneman: We go over that economic data that you see on a regular basis and what it means for the markets, what it means for your investments.
• 0:24
  Megan Horneman: And this morning we received the final reading on March's University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index.
• 0:32
  Megan Horneman: And it showed that consumer sentiment fell to a three-month low for the month.
• 0:37
  Megan Horneman: We saw a decline in both of the components, not only the sentiment on current conditions, but also sentiment on future expectations.
• 0:46
  Megan Horneman: In fact, that saw the biggest decline that we've seen in about 11 months.
• 0:51
  Megan Horneman: The other thing that this index looks at is inflation expectations.
• 0:55
  Megan Horneman: And we saw that one year ahead inflation expectations rose pretty significantly to 3.8%.
• 1:02
  Megan Horneman: That means that consumers think that what's been going on with the war in Iran is going to filter into inflation over the next year.
• 1:10
  Megan Horneman: It was actually the largest one-month increase that we've seen since that liberation day move in April of last year.
• 1:18
  Megan Horneman: Now, some of the reasons why sentiment was weak was not just because of inflation, but also the expectation for household finances.
• 1:25
  Megan Horneman: So when you have higher prices and you're not as optimistic about income, that causes a deterioration in the expectation for household finances.
• 1:34
  Megan Horneman: But we also saw more people expecting higher interest rates over the next year.
• 1:39
  Megan Horneman: So for a long time, um consumers had favored had expected that the Fed would be cutting rates.
• 1:44
  Megan Horneman: Well, it's starting to get a little bit more realistic.
• 1:47
  Megan Horneman: And in this report, we saw not only declines in lower income households, which do tend to be more sensitive to the moves we've seen in energy prices, but because of the market weakness, we're starting to see this filter into some of those middle and higher income households.
• 2:04
  Megan Horneman: So clearly uh the sentiment has been weak.
• 2:07
  Megan Horneman: Next week, we'll get information on spending retail sales.
• 2:11
  Megan Horneman: So we'll see if some of this weak consumer sentiment filters into spending numbers.
• 2:16
  Megan Horneman: And the markets are significantly weaker again today.
• 2:19
  Megan Horneman: It doesn't have to do just with this report.
• 2:22
  Megan Horneman: In fact, um, sometimes these reports get overlooked because it is a second reading on this index, but it has a lot to do with just this ongoing tensions with Iran, the uncertainty around um what's going on with Iran, and we are seeing um energy prices again higher today.
• 2:37
  Megan Horneman: We're also seeing a pretty big um slip in technology stocks where the Nasdaq has now entered correction territory.
• 2:44
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have for today and this week.
• 2:46
  Megan Horneman: If you want a history of our podcast, you go to marketswithmegan.fm.
• 2:50
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.