“WOW! Consumer confidence up BIG! Thank you President Trump!”

That’s what I’d say on my social media platform if I were a demagogue staring down interim elections with the potential to cost my personality cult control of government.

Tuesday’s Conference Board headline printed 91.7, which is either great or terrible depending on how you want to look at it.

Consensus expected 81, so technically speaking, this was a huge beat. In absolute terms, 91.7’s a very poor readout, but we live in an increasingly relative world. With that in mind, October’s headline counts as the best since June, which is to say since Donald Trump’s Iran MOU fell apart.

Recall that September’s print came in below the COVID crash levels, a testament to just how disenchanted American households really are. It was revised higher on Tuesday.

As the figure shows, the 7.5ppt MoM increase was the most pronounced since Trump “paused” the most draconian of his China tariffs early last year.

Both the present situation gauge and the expectations indexes improved, although the latter remains well below levels that’ve historically presaged recessions.

“The recovery was in line with retail gas prices easing from September to October,” the editorial accompanying the release remarked. Still, the report said, “consumer confidence remain[s] on the long-term downward trend that’s persisted over the past few years,” with the dour mood largely attributable to “higher price levels and persistent inflation.”

The labor differential, arguably the most important indicator from the Conference Board report, improved thanks entirely to the share who described jobs as “plentiful.” The share who described work as “hard to get” was mostly unchanged north of 21%, the highest of Trump’s second term.