Americans’ Consumer Sentiment Slumps As ‘Current Conditions’ Crash To 18-Month Lows

October 25, 2022

After an unexpected rebound in the last two months, analysts expected The Conference Board’s headline sentiment index to weaken in October and it did… considerably.

The headline print fell from 107.8 to 102.5 (well below the 105.9 expected). The drop was driven by a plunge in ‘current conditions’ which fell from 150.2 to 138.9 while ‘future expectations’ also slipped from 79.5 to 78.1…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the biggest monthly drop in ‘current conditions’ since Dec 2021, dragging it to its weakest since April 2021.

Given the gloomy signals from UMich (and history of the Conference Board overdoing things to the upside), is there more pain to come for the Conf Board measure…