There’s no other way to look at this first 100 days other than a huge success.
— Maria Bartiromo, April 29, 2025
Americans’ expectations about the economy, the business outlook and their own finances collapsed to a 13-year low in April, accordingly to a wholly (if predictably) unfortunate update from the Conference Board.
Between Tuesday’s release and the University of Michigan sentiment readout for April, these are the worst snapshots of household dispositions I’ve personally ever seen, and that includes mid-2022, the pandemic and the existential sense of dread which prevailed in and around Lehman’s collapse.
The Conference Board headline was 86, a miss to consensus, down 8ppt from March and the worst reading since… well, since a long time ago. More notably, the five-month decline is a remarkable 27ppt.
Note from the chart that the monthly declines are accelerating: From a 3ppt drop to a 4ppt drop to a 5ppt drop to 6ppt drop to now an 8ppt drop.
If you’re not chuckling, you should be. This is indicative of comical policy malpractice. Total incompetence. Trump’s policies haven’t even had a chance to manifest in the hard data yet, and already he’s plunged Americans into clinical depression. He’s created a crisis of confidence just by talking about what he’s going to do.
As bad as the headline decline was, the Conference Board’s expectations gauge crumbled a truly egregious 13ppt to just 54.4. Insert exclamation points. The threshold below which a recession has historically begun over the ensuing 12 months is 80. We’re now a laughable 25.5ppt into “recession alert” territory.
That measure of consumers’ outlook for the US economy hasn’t been this bad since October of 2011, following the debt ceiling crisis and the S&P downgrade.
“The three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects and future income — all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” Stephanie Guichard, a senior economist at the Conference Board said, adding that at 32%, the share of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months “was nearly as high as in April 2009.”
Again — and I realize this is repetitive — all you can do is laugh, tragic as it is. It’s not so much how bad the readouts are, although it’s that too. Rather, it’s how quickly things deteriorated.
America went from boasting a seemingly bulletproof economy at the turn of the year to now the worst outlook at least since Lehman, and according to the University of Michigan, since the early 1980s.
“He is the most consequential American leader of the 21st Century. And that’s an understatement.”
— Mike Johnson, April 29, 2025
As to quote #1, I continue to be amazed at how many people voluntary watch and consume what is purely propaganda as a news source. Propaganda which has proved to be highly profitable and repeatable throughout the media ecosystem.
Quote #2, absolutely, consequential as in America is facing the consequences for electing a carnival barker supported by the above propaganda.
Yeah, that’s why I included that Johnson quote. He’s absolutely right. Just not in the way he means.
Like…I feel bad for irony. Prometheus was like “Hey, Irony…have you ever tried a fate worse than death?”
sentiment velocity is worthy of your repeated mention here … since COVID times, sentiment & data velocity has increased materially anecdotally imho …
how fast you need to outrun a bear is getting much faster – the people in front of you don’t wait to confirm it’s a bear – they just run first and ask later!
how I worry that traders making money today think it’s their skill rather than luck … just keep running faster!
In real life, almost no one – even Usain Bolt in his prime – can outrun a bear for long!
You don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the guy next to you.
What if it’s a sleuth of bears?
That’s only if you’re a relative return investor . . .
I continue to subject myself to the NYTimes conversations with Trump voters and it just confirms how hopelessly naive these people are, but at least these surveys provide some evidence that more people are getting it.
Yeah, wait 2 weeks until empty shelves are in stores and images thereof are all over the news. I’m expecting a brief bout of hysteria in line with toilet paper during the initial stages of the COVID shut down.