Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Good Vibes, Bad Market? | S2 E064 | 07-29-25

Transcript

Good Vibes, Bad Market? | S2 E064 | 07-29-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: Consumers are liking the stuff that we've seen here lately from an economic standpoint and from a tariff standpoint.
• 0:08
  Megan Horneman: It is Markets with Megan, it's Tuesday, july 29th, and we're here today with our next economic report, and this is on consumer confidence for the month of July.
• 0:18
  Megan Horneman: What the conference board is indicating is that consumer confidence actually rose for the month.
• 0:23
  Megan Horneman: This is the first time that or, I'm sorry, the second increase we've seen over the past nine months.
• 0:29
  Megan Horneman: So this is a big deal.
• 0:30
  Megan Horneman: Consumers are not as optimistic about the present situation of the economy.
• 0:34
  Megan Horneman: That actually declined, but the biggest increase was on the expectations for the future.
• 0:40
  Megan Horneman: That actually rose to a five-month high.
• 0:43
  Megan Horneman: So consumers are getting more positive about what?
• 0:46
  Megan Horneman: Whether it's the tax bill, whether it's the conclusion we've had of some of these tariffs, whether it's economic data that's been relatively resilient.
• 0:54
  Megan Horneman: Consumers are feeling more confident about the future prospects.
• 0:57
  Megan Horneman: When you look at the component that has to do with the labor market so this is jobs plentiful versus those jobs out there that are hard to get that actually drifted lower.
• 1:08
  Megan Horneman: That's the lowest level we've seen now since 2021.
• 1:11
  Megan Horneman: So consumers and Americans are holding on to the jobs they have.
• 1:15
  Megan Horneman: They're not finding jobs as plentiful.
• 1:17
  Megan Horneman: But when you look at things like income and inflation expectations, these things improve so confidence on the income over the next six months.
• 1:27
  Megan Horneman: That rose to a year-to-date high.
• 1:29
  Megan Horneman: So higher income means better expectations for the future of the economy.
• 1:34
  Megan Horneman: Inflation expectations over the next 12 months they drifted lower, but just by a bit.
• 1:41
  Megan Horneman: Again, any drift lower is positive news.
• 1:43
  Megan Horneman: Here they drifted lower to 5.8% in the next 12 months compared to the expectation for 5.9% in June.
• 1:51
  Megan Horneman: So consumers are a bit more optimistic about the risk of price increases over the next 12 months and they're more optimistic about their income expectations.
• 2:02
  Megan Horneman: So this resulted in a better consumer confidence report.
• 2:06
  Megan Horneman: Now the equity markets today are lower.
• 2:10
  Megan Horneman: We've given you a lot of information about economic data today.
• 2:13
  Megan Horneman: There's a lot of reports this week, not just about the economy.
• 2:16
  Megan Horneman: We have a lot of earnings, and then we also talked about how some of the tariff deals are being solidified here.
• 2:22
  Megan Horneman: This report, we don't think really has a ton to do with what we're seeing in the equity markets today.
• 2:28
  Megan Horneman: Instead, we are looking at going into a Fed meeting tomorrow with valuations that are very high.
• 2:34
  Megan Horneman: Might be pricing in all this good news that we've outlined here from an economic standpoint.
• 2:38
  Megan Horneman: So there is some risk that there could be some profit taking here in the coming weeks.
• 2:43
  Megan Horneman: As we get past a lot of this data we get past tariffs, we get past that tax bill as some profit taking here in the coming weeks as we get past a lot of this data we get past tariffs, we get past that tax bill.
• 2:49
  Megan Horneman: As we've seen here, this may result in maybe some profit taking as valuations are high Now.
• 2:54
  Megan Horneman: We'll be back tomorrow with some more economic data.
• 2:58
  Megan Horneman: Tomorrow we will get that first reading on the second quarter GDP.
• 3:03
  Megan Horneman: This is important, considering the first quarter was negative.
• 3:06
  Megan Horneman: The expectation is for a 2.5% increase in the second quarter and we'll also get that Fed meeting tomorrow that will come and give our analysis on what we see for the upcoming meeting after July's meeting, which will be in September.
• 3:19
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 3:21
  Megan Horneman: If you want a history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmeganfm.
• 3:24
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.