The Rest Of The Measures!

Consumer sentiment, also known as the Reuter's/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, is due out soon. This is a monthly survey of at least 500 households. The goal is to assess consumer attitudes on the economy, to try to understand and forecast changes in the economy, and to judge the level of optimism or pessimism in the consumer's mind. Numbers over 50.0 are good, and improving numbers are good. Consumer sentiment was at 69.3 in October, and the Street is looking for an extremely tame improvement to 69.5 for November.

Along with consumer sentiment, we're looking for New Home Sales. This figure, while useful, is not as exciting to the market as either housing starts or existing home sales. Most of the economic impact of a new home has already been felt by the time it is sold, after all. Still, given the Fed's current policy of reinflate the housing bubble no matter what", this is an important number right now. September saw 307k new home sales, and the Street is looking for an increase to 314k new home sales for October.

How did we do? The consumer confidence press release can be viewed at https://customers.reuters.com/wetfetch/index.aspx?CID=02701&doc=PR201011.pdf&base=/community/university/default.aspx, while the new home sales press release can be read at http://www.census.gov/const/newressales.pdf.

Consumer confidence rose unexpectedly to 71.6, beating expectations, with current conditions being seen as more favorable than future expectations. Half of the households surveyed expect the economy to remain unchanged during the coming year, although the majority do expect things to slowly improve. Also, despite the favorable personal income report earlier, one in three households surveyed reported a decline in household income. Only 25% expect their finances to improve in the year ahead, and the majority expect no income increase whatsoever.

New home sales came in substantially worse than expected, with only 283k for October. On the other hand, most of those were sold in the South, where sales increased. That probably stands to reason, given the time of year and the climate.