Sharp reactions to Conference Board consumer confidence index today. Here’s some context for this movement, as well as that in the U.Michigan survey of economic sentiment.

Figure 1: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment (blue, left scale), Conference Board Consumer Confidence (tan, left scale), Gallup Economic Confidence (light green, left scale), all demeaned and normalized by standard deviation (for the displayed sample period); and Shapiro, Sudhof and Wilson (2020) Daily News Sentiment Index (black, right scale). The News Index observation for April is through 4/25/2024. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: U.Mich via FRED, Conference Board via Investing.com, Gallup, SF Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations.

While all indices dropped (as did the news sentiment index) in April, the Conference Board index is substantially above pandemic levels. The surprise is that this index hasn’t shown much response to the increasingly positive news sentiment (while the U.Michigan and Gallup indices have).

More By This Author: