The University of Michigan’s closely-watched Consumer Sentiment Survey revealed that the headline confidence index fell to 95.3 from the 97.9 in the previous estimate and fell short of the market expectation of 98.
Key quotes from the press release
- Consumer sentiment slipped to its lowest level since last September, with the decline concentrated among households in the bottom third of the income distribution.
- The dominating weakness reflected much less favorable assessments of buying conditions, mainly due to less favorable perceptions of market prices.
- Buying conditions for large household durables sank to the lowest level in nearly four years.
- Some price resistance has been neutralized by rising wages, although the falloff in favorable price perceptions has been much larger than ever before recorded.
- Overall, the data indicate that consumers have little tolerance for overshooting inflation targets.