Consumer Confidence: 15 Year Down Trend

“The Conference Board said its sentiment index climbed to 78.1 from 72 in November, exceeding the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and the strongest year-end reading since 2007.”

That’s how Bloomberg put it in crowing about the ConCon beating the consensus guess of economists, whose median expectation was a reading of 76. The pundits then took that “beat” to make all kinds of absurd extrapolations about the wonderful future we face in 2014.

My take is a little different as usual. First we need to have a little perspective on this one month change reading.  That comes from a long term chart.  In this case, the data is proprietary to the Con Board, but Briefing.com puts up a nice chart each month.  Like any good chartist, I just add a few lines and then interpret the chart based on common standards of technical analysis, a discipline which economists, being the clown frauds that they are, do not take seriously.

Con Con Indexes- Click to enlarge

The mainstream media conveniently ignores the fact that the Con Con has been in a 15 year downtrend. It ignores the fact that over the past 4 years the index has merely returned to the upper trendline. Technical analysts and chartists would call that “resistance.” Professional traders, particularly if they work for Wall Street Primary Dealers, would probably be establishing large short positions on the Con Con right about now. In other words, sell the news.