Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Warning Sign: Expectations Hits Decade Low | S2 E023 | 03-25-25

Transcript

Warning Sign: Expectations Hits Decade Low | S2 E023 | 03-25-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: Consumer sentiment on the economy just keeps going lower.
• 0:03
  Megan Horneman: It is Tuesday, march the 25th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:07
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• 0:09
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• 0:12
  Megan Horneman: But today we're here to talk about one of the big economic data points we got this morning around the consumer.
• 0:18
  Megan Horneman: We get consumer confidence from a couple different sources.
• 0:21
  Megan Horneman: Today was the conference board and this gives us a good indication on really just the sentiment of the overall consumer.
• 0:27
  Megan Horneman: It historically has also been a precursor to what we can expect for future consumer spending.
• 0:33
  Megan Horneman: What we're seeing is that broad consumer confidence declined to the lowest level we've seen since December of 2021.
• 0:40
  Megan Horneman: The consumer confidence in the present situation also declined, but it wasn't as bad as we saw in the deterioration of the expectation component.
• 0:51
  Megan Horneman: So this is how consumers feel about the future.
• 0:53
  Megan Horneman: That fell to the lowest level we've seen since 2013.
• 0:57
  Megan Horneman: Now the markets aren't really looking too much into this day to day.
• 1:01
  Megan Horneman: It could be because of the fact that we did get some upward revisions to all three of these measures of consumer confidence from the prior month, but when you look at the absolute level, it just shows a pretty dire picture for the consumer.
• 1:13
  Megan Horneman: Now let's just dig into some of those details.
• 1:15
  Megan Horneman: The other thing the Fed will take notice of is that consumer inflation expectations actually rose.
• 1:22
  Megan Horneman: They're actually now at the highest in about two years.
• 1:24
  Megan Horneman: Inflation expectations actually rose.
• 1:25
  Megan Horneman: They're actually now at the highest in about two years.
• 1:27
  Megan Horneman: When you look at where is some of this leading from, it's primarily just their outlook for incomes.
• 1:33
  Megan Horneman: That's the lowest level we've also seen since 2022.
• 1:36
  Megan Horneman: It's also been broad-based from an income level.
• 1:39
  Megan Horneman: If you look at anything below $125,000 a year, it all declined.
• 1:45
  Megan Horneman: The only thing that saw a modest uptick was those making more than $125,000.
• 1:50
  Megan Horneman: We're also seeing some weakness from the labor market perspective.
• 1:55
  Megan Horneman: So overall, consumers are concerned about the future.
• 1:58
  Megan Horneman: We think this will continue to be a challenge for consumer spending as we go into this year, which ultimate will be what results in slower growth this year than last year.
• 2:07
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 2:09
  Megan Horneman: We'll be back this week.
• 2:10
  Megan Horneman: We have plenty more economic data to come back to ahead of what will be a big day next week with that April 2nd reciprocal trade day.
• 2:18
  Megan Horneman: We'll get the last reading this week on GDP.
• 2:21
  Megan Horneman: We'll also get some more data from the housing market.
• 2:24
  Megan Horneman: Thank you very much.
• 2:25
  Megan Horneman: If you want to see a further History of Our Podcast, you can go to marketswithmeganfm.