Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / CPI Gut Punch: It Just Got Worse | S2 E035 | 04-29-25
Transcript
- 0:01Megan Horneman: Just when we thought it couldn't get worse, it continues to get worse.
- 0:04Megan Horneman: It is Tuesday, April the 29th, and this is Markets with Megan.
- 0:07Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, hit that alarm bell and you can share it with friends, family or colleagues.
- 0:12Megan Horneman: But we're here today to dig into some of the economic data we got this morning, and it's on consumer confidence.
- 0:17Megan Horneman: I feel like a broken record, but every month we come out with different consumer confidence readings that just get worse and worse and worse.
- 0:24Megan Horneman: The conference board this morning released the consumer confidence for the month of April and it actually came in below expectations and it's the lowest level since May of 2020.
- 0:34Megan Horneman: And that's really the depths of the pandemic.
- 0:37Megan Horneman: The expectations component, which is confidence on the future expectations of the economy, that fell to the lowest level since October of 2011.
- 0:47Megan Horneman: To put that in perspective, that's also we were in the depths of the European peripheral debt crisis.
- 0:52Megan Horneman: We were coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
- 0:56Megan Horneman: It's never been this low.
- 0:58Megan Horneman: That expectations component, aside from that European peripheral debt crisis, it's never been this low and we have not been already in a recession.
- 1:07Megan Horneman: When we break down some of the details, it was really led by the concerns about the employment outlook and also outlook on income levels.
- 1:15Megan Horneman: But when you look at age levels, the biggest drop we saw was in the age group of 35 to 54.
- 1:22Megan Horneman: And what's surprising is that some of the upper income has held okay.
- 1:27Megan Horneman: In a lot of this turmoil we've seen in the markets as well as the slowdown in the economy, but we saw the biggest drop in the month of April in those income levels above 125,000.
- 1:37Megan Horneman: So it's starting to spread across not only age demographics but also those income demographics.
- 1:43Megan Horneman: We saw the jobs hard to get component that rose for the third consecutive month and that can sometimes be a leading indicator for what to expect on the labor market report.
- 1:53Megan Horneman: The other indicator that's troublesome for the market is that the inflation expectations for the next 12 months that rose to 7%.
- 2:02Megan Horneman: That was the highest level we've seen since November of 2022, when we were dealing with the post-COVID related inflation that we saw after COVID really, really disappointing economic data like this.
- 2:25Megan Horneman: You tend to see investors and market expectations increase the estimates for what the Fed can do and expecting that the Fed will come in and cut rates sooner than later, and that can be positive for the equity markets.
- 2:33Megan Horneman: We also had some decent news on the tariff-related front when it comes to autos, so that's helped with the market.
- 2:39Megan Horneman: Today.
- 2:39Megan Horneman: It's a data-packed week.
- 2:41Megan Horneman: This week it's only Tuesday.
- 2:43Megan Horneman: We'll be back tomorrow.
- 2:45Megan Horneman: We'll get the first reading on GDP.
- 2:47Megan Horneman: We'll also get the Fed's preferred inflation indicator and then we'll get ISM manufacturing, ism services, as well as the labor report will end out the week for the month of March.
- 3:00Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
- 3:01Megan Horneman: If you would like to see a further history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmegan.
- 3:04Megan Horneman: fm.
- 3:06Megan Horneman: Thank you.