American Consumers Unsure What’s Next

The preliminary read on US consumer sentiment in March was mercifully uneventful on Friday. I say "mercifully" because we're teetering on the edge of a market mood shift, I think, after consecutive warm reads on inflation and a lackluster retail sales report. For now, investors are content to persist in the notion (or maybe it's a fantasy) that the macro balance remains favorable -- that "soft landing" and "Goldilocks" are still the base case. But as BofA's Michael Hartnett pointed out in his