Consumer Confidence in July 2016

Sources for the following article are the Conference Board and SMU analysis. Please see the end of this piece for an explanation of the indicator.

Consumer Confidence jumped from 92.4 in May to 97.3 in June then eked out a small gain to 97.4 in July. Included below is the official news release from the Conference Board. The three month moving average (3MMA) rose from 94.4 in May to 94.8 in June then to 95.7 in July. We prefer to smooth the data in this way because of monthly volatility which in the case of consumer confidence has been quite extreme since the beginning of last year. The composite index is made up of two sub-indexes. These are the consumer’s view of the present situation and his/her expectations for the future. The 3MMA of the present situation is now below its six year trend and that of expectations has been below its six year trend for the last ten months (Figure 1).