nytimes.com/shiftingcareers PESSIMISTIC (CONSUMERS) TO OPTIMISTIC (LENDERS) Floyd Norris says the latest consumer sentiment numbers are bad across the board.
Initial unemployment claims shot up and the preliminary consumer sentiment numbers from the University of Michigan showed a sharp fall.
"We had weak durable goods, the consumer sentiment numbers looked bad, and stocks and the Nasdaq are trading horribly," said John Roberts, head of government trading at Barclays Capital.
Although the market got an upbeat outlook from Dell Computer and encouraging consumer sentiment numbers, investors appeared to be taking a break, which was not surprising after four days of mostly higher results, analysts said.
The latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are really bad across the board, but a couple of figures stand out: * 56percentt of Americans, asked if the goverment's economic policy is good, only fair, or poor, chose poor.
Instead they concentrated on better than expected jobless and confidence figures from the US ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, good UK GDP growth, and stronger business sentiment numbers from Germany.
Finally, in yet another sign of a tapped-out economy, October's Consumer Sentiment numbers were released on Halloween and, fittingly, were frightful.
And lately sentiment numbers, or surveys, have been arguably stronger than real activity.
It took the data scientists at CivicScience two years and twenty-four readings to hone our Economic Sentiment numbers to the prevailing indices.
Beyond revealing a certain inconsistency in voter sentiment, these numbers demonstrate that Lugo is significantly more popular than Cartes, who garnered 12%.
