Worst Ever Consumer Sentiment: Signal For Economic Collapse? — Joanne Hsu

[00:00:00] Joanne Shu: people say they want deflation but they don't actually want deflation in real life because of all the other things that come with deflation low wealth consumers they have not moved whatsoever and why should they right they don't own any stock they're not they don't feel like they're personally benefiting from from uh from the rising stock market if the stock market has an impact let's [00:00:19] Speaker 2: say on economic growth you can start to say uh financial conditions will trickle down to the masses uh that isn't reflected in the data what would you respond to that uh want one we're back with joanne shu director of the service of consumers at the university of michigan and on the agenda today whether or not the consumer sentiment is on the mend or whether we're going to see continued weakness into the end of the year welcome back to show joanne good to see you thanks for having me early in the year uh joanne we had a episode where the consumer sentiment was the weakest in the university of michigan's history a lot of that had to do with uh higher inflation expectations and the rising oil price since then even though oil has still remained volatile i believe the print has changed somewhat uh have we seen any evidence so far that consumer sentiment has improved [00:01:10] Joanne Shu: that's a great question so first off i'll note that uh what was being kind of discussed as an all-time historic low that we saw in may we really should think about that as being comparable to the previous all-time low which was actually just four years ago in june of 2022 so you know i don't think it's really that much of a mystery why people felt so bad relative to mid 2022 you know 2022 there was uh the highest inflation in 40 years but labor markets were really strong um and people had reliable incomes and right now you know we're kind of in a low higher low fire environment and people just don't feel as confident about their incomes um and on top of that we're in the middle of a a very highly uncertain uh military conflict in the middle east so um that being said since may that trough that we saw there we've had two consecutive months of pretty strong increases more than 10 improvements in june as well as july we just released this morning the the final print for july so consumers are not feeling nearly as bad as they were in may but even though we had these big gains the last two months we're still 11 below where we were a year ago so overall consumers still feeling pretty somber about the economy [00:02:23] Speaker 2: to the um reversal that we saw in july so by the way this i'll leave this here uh this was this was the latest result for july 2026 index of consumer sentiment 55.2 up slightly from 49.5 uh still down from the previous years of july reading and uh and um yeah ultimately that the trend is downward despite the fact that the one month uh move is up so was this one month improvement predicated on or built on the uh improving iran situation or do you think consumers over time have just become accustomed to higher oil prices and therefore it's just desensitivity so to speak so what we're seeing [00:03:06] Joanne Shu: is that there's not much evidence that consumers are responding specifically to geopolitical developments they're really focused on kitchen table issues and of course gas prices play a major role in that um so while the reason for glass gas price fluctuation is the reason that gas prices are much higher now than they were a few months ago of course that's due to geopolitical developments but you know is there an mou is there a ceasefire consumers aren't really responding to that what they are responding to is the the change in gas prices and overall for the month of june we saw saw some improvement uh relative to may um you know but towards the end of the month and ongoing this week uh we're we're seeing uh you know additional increases in gas prices energy prices around the world uh with continued closure on the strait of hormuz so it seems like it's going to be pretty difficult to sustain this kind of two-month uh streak of strong improvement unless we see some meaningful relief uh that [00:04:03] Speaker 2: is sustained with gas prices uh ai mentions have gone down uh from 1.6 two years ago to now 11 um they've essentially flatlined since march in november when you were on the show last year you told us ai's effect on sentiment depends entirely on what it does with labor markets uh have we seen any changes in sentiment in regards to ai and layoffs so what we're seeing [00:04:28] Joanne Shu: we've seen quite a bit of of of increases in the share of consumers uh mentioning ai now relative to the last time when we spoke what was it eight months ago um and what we're seeing now is pretty clearly a mix of people uh some of whom are mentioning ai in a positive context like they're mentioning how it's propping up stock markets how it might be driving uh productivity gains or efficiency gains but then you have a lot of consumers looking at very different factors there's again really worried about the potential impact of ai on labor markets they talk about the prospect of job loss and layoffs um and then still there's another group of consumers who's focused on data centers and they're typically talking about data centers in the context of of of negative externalities so potential impact on electricity prices in that local area or that state some are mentioning potential environmental externalities as well um so really it's interesting that consumers are really thinking about ai in a variety of ways on balance at this time the comments look to be negative on net um that that could change in the future okay i'd like to bring up a um a paper that you co-wrote in 2022 [00:05:42] Speaker 2: so this is just deviating a little bit from uh the michigan survey here investor confidence in high financial literacy jointly shape investments in risky assets now um broadly speaking i think your paper finds that confidence in the macro economy drives how much of our portfolio sits in equities separate from financial literacy and separate from risk preferences um can you just summarize your findings here with your co-authors and whether or not consumer sentiment plays a direct role uh the data at least plays a direct role in how portfolio managers allocate assets uh so for first of all um i do want [00:06:15] Joanne Shu: to be clear we're talking about retail investors here managing their own personal portfolios um and i also want to note that we're here we're using the survey of consumer finances which is a completely different data set uh than than the michigan survey um and the the confidence measure that we have here which is about confidence in the macro economy economy is not quite the same but is highly correlated with one part of what we measure in sentiment uh which is expected business conditions um on the consumer sentiment index we have a 12 month as well as a five to ten year or five year expected business condition number so uh you know what we are calling investor confidence in this particular paper is highly correlated um or has a lot of overlap with the expectations part of the consumer sentiment index and essentially what we find is that confidence and financial literacy exert separate effects promoting a portfolio allocation to to risky assets like stocks and stock market participation more [00:07:16] Speaker 2: generally while gold has grabbed most of the precious metals headlines the metal with the most torque in a bull cycle is often silver and there are important macro trends that make the setup hard to ignore right now first gold still backs about only three percent of u.s government debt if that coverage ratio even partially mean reverted toward prior historical peaks it implies dramatically higher gold prices tightening the entire precious metals complex second history shows that after major 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investor is going to be looking at lots of different data sets lots of different data points and if i can help them out in any way with the michigan consumer sentiment index i'm thrilled to do so historically what has [00:10:56] Speaker 2: been the relationship between sentiment consumer sentiment and interest rates specifically the long end of the yield curve uh for treasury yields the situation right now is that the 10-year and 30-year have been rising uh in the last 40 45 days it's continued to rise a lot more over the last couple of days since the uh fomc kept rates unchanged kevin warship himself even made a comment that uh rates have gone up despite the federal reserve keeping the fed funds rates unchanged in other words the bond market has been kind of doing his job for him anyway a lot of consumer products are linked to the 10-year and if that goes up presumably we can see interest costs go up as well and borrowing costs go up as a result [00:11:42] Joanne Shu: how have consumers responded to this trend so consumers are um they're not watching fed policy at at all um and so they're typically not going to be responding to that they're also not really watching or most consumers are not watching financial markets uh looking at at these other interest rates um consumers what they are reacting to are the economic realities around them um and right now the number one factor that's influencing consumer behavior and consumer sentiment really is high inflation high prices you know this we're we're now at five years above the fed's inflation target um and consumers continue to be very very frustrated by the persistence of high prices um you know i i will note that when it comes to the surveys of consumers there we have a few different headline measures that don't always move in concert so we have you know the headline consumer sentiment index uh which is an overall snapshot of how consumers feel about the outlook for the economy but then we also have specific questions on inflation expectations and that's another number a set of numbers that are very closely watched by the uh by by the federal reserve um and so when when you hear policy makers talking about consumer views they actually talk about inflation expectations more than they talk about sentiment itself but both are our headline numbers and the main takeaway from inflation expectations is that it has moderated a bit since um the start of the iran uh iran conflict um however uh consumers are still expecting much higher inflation both in the short run as well as the long run than they were back in february so that's not something that policy makers want to see if they want to keep inflation expectations under control keep them well anchored um they they don't want to see they don't they don't want to see inflation expectations as high as they are right now is there a measure uh with which you uh measure consumer like [00:13:46] Speaker 2: happiness or let me just give you a personal attitude here um i had a conversation with somebody the other day and we were discussing economic growth and he said well gdp is the default measure of output and growth but it doesn't capture someone's living standards if somebody somebody is living in an economy that's growing by gdp growth measures but let's say the health life expectancy is dwindling or the person's just unhappy with work or they're stuck in a dead-end job or they don't have any free time or you know the the environment is polluted and you're breathing you know smog every day there are other measures that may impact somebody's sentiment and consumer uh well-being besides just maybe inflation in labor markets um have you looked into this so our sentiment index i think captures [00:14:40] Joanne Shu: that pretty well because it covers a number of different domains it's not just what do you think of the economy it's based on five questions that are based both on current perceptions as well as future expectations for personal finances uh this macroeconomic business conditions and buying conditions for big ticket prices big ticket items um and so taken together i think this is very much a um an on the pulse measure of consumers views of the economy and their own personal experiences when you look at personal finances alone so we have a question about um whether your personal finances have gotten better or worse or the same as relative to a year ago and then we have an open-ended question on why and that open-ended question provides a ton of color about what it is that people are feeling about their experiences in the economy so this idea from that like you've mentioned is about cost of living uh is it about income volatility job loss uh loss of health you know what's happening with health insurance you know this is a completely open-ended follow-up question people can say whatever they want and what we we're seeing there is the number one factor is high prices you know some people might say it specifically in terms of gas prices or about health insurance costs or gas or or the cost of food but overall prices is by far the the number one [00:16:02] Speaker 2: thing that's weighing on people now okay uh let's go over these five core questions and i think a lot of people participating in the actual survey itself maybe watching this right now i think it might be a good exercise i don't think i've done this with you but actually how you joanne would answer these questions i'm not don't you don't have to give the answer yourself you know but just walk us through the criteria with which you would evaluate the answers here are you financially better or worse off than a year ago um i think that's pretty clear but are you just looking at your bank statement here how would you answer this question [00:16:32] Joanne Shu: well every person is going to answer this in a different way you know some people i think it's unlikely anyone's actually opening up their bank statement but i don't think they need to i i think if they are feeling financially secure they don't need to check their most recent balance to know that um and and so you know what a lot of research has shown is that with these these kinds of questions um you know what consumers what respondents are kind of pulling out of their mind in that moment without thinking too hard about it is actually a pretty good reflection of their experiences [00:17:05] Speaker 2: will you be better or worse off one year from now how would you answer that [00:17:11] Joanne Shu: well that that again some people are going to think about you know what are the exchange what are the changes that i expect in my life over the next year what are the changes i expect in the economy over the next year um you know a person who is retired and on a fixed income um they're not really thinking about income volatility at all they might be thinking about how much are my costs going to go up um if you um if you are a young person just graduating from college you'll be thinking about uh where do i think the the labor market's going to be for my major in in a few months um and if you are a young parent uh you know looking to uh to move into a house an apartment or house with more bedrooms you'll be thinking about what mortgage rates might look like what the housing market like might look like so the the really the the really wonderful thing about this is we're getting a swath of the u.s population and everyone's going to be bringing in different different factors um depending on their own situations and when you average them together uh from month to month you'll get a pretty accurate measure of whether americans as a whole consumers as a whole are seeing things on the upswing [00:18:22] Speaker 2: or the downswing well i can offer uh my interpretation so a couple years ago when i was uh an employee at a company uh i'm looking at whether or not my uh real earnings so inflation adjusted salary would go up so basically do i still have a job next year am i confident i'll get laid off uh probably not i'm pretty confident that i'll have a job next year am i confident i'll get a raise i don't know i can't control that uh my performance is okay i guess but i'm looking at maybe a raise i got one last year maybe one next year um is inflation high that's that's the key question that that i have to you know consult economists uh it's going to be high next year yeah maybe so therefore it probably worse off right now as a business owner i'm looking at is the economy going to shrink our markets going to tank those things determine whether or not there's going to be business [00:19:12] Joanne Shu: next year um and yeah same person different circumstances exactly factors yeah will business [00:19:18] Speaker 2: conditions be good or bad over the next year now that's a difficult question um how would someone who's not a business owner know how to answer that question they may not be a business well some of them [00:19:27] Joanne Shu: are business owners but even the ones who aren't they're interacting with businesses all the time um and they are the customers of businesses they're patronizing businesses probably every day um and so they're kind of looking looking at the world around them um and saying you know how much foot traffic is there uh at the shopping center how hard is it for me to find a parking space how hard is it to get you know a dinner reservation or how long is the drive-through line at mcdonald's you know you may not be the proprietor of a business but you're interacting with businesses all the time [00:20:00] Speaker 2: now the fourth question will business conditions be good or bad over the next five years that's interesting why did you break it down between one and five years oh we really want to get a sense [00:20:08] Joanne Shu: of um if people think things are going to be on the upswing or the downswing whether that's something that's going to persist in the future far into the future or do or is it a reflection of a short-term shock so as an example let's think back to about a year ago when there were a ton of developments with respect to tariff policy we want to look separately at at potential effects in the short run in the long run because you may imagine in the short run it might be very difficult for businesses to absorb a brand new policy like this but you might think oh it'll you know after a couple of years uh businesses will adjust some factories will be reshored new supply chains will open up and and if you expect something save that in the short run you may not think that'll be the case in the long run and in fact we saw that in a lot of open-ended comments not just related to tariffs but also right now related to the war where it's where people are saying you know i expect gas prices to be really bad right now for the next year but when the war is over i expect those gas prices to come down and that's why it's really important to look separately at the short run as well as the long run [00:21:11] Speaker 2: is now a good or bad time to buy major household goods this becomes an interesting question and problem in itself do we have any evidence to suggest that if a lot of people overwhelmingly vote yes and actually do buy household goods now that's actually a self-fulfilling prophecy for higher inflation [00:21:29] Joanne Shu: so that is one of the reasons why this question is there so after we ask you is it a good or bad time to buy this big ticket purchase we then ask why and one of the follow one of those open-ended responses categories that we've been looking at and again this is completely open-ended we're just kind of classifying them after we receive them from our respondents um we're tracking the share of respondents who say now is a good time to buy because prices aren't coming down in the future or we think prices are going to go up in the future so you better buy that dishwasher now before it gets more expensive and that is an example of inflationary psychology because enough people do that they pull their their purchases to the present that would put upward pressure on inflation just as you mentioned so um you know going back to tariffs again um right after the presidential election um consumers many consumers were anticipating that tariffs were going to hit as soon as a new presidential administration was in place in place in january so in november and december we had a surge of consumers picking uh reporting inflationary psychology with respect to these big ticket purchases buy that car now buy that appliance now before tariffs kick in and prices get even higher in the future and indeed when you look at 2024 q4 durable spending auto spending there was a surge in that spending as well um so that's a that's a very recent um a very recent example of people acting on their beliefs and when you actually look at this measure of inflationary psychology going back to the 60s because yes we do have data going back that far when there's a sustained surge in these buy and advanced motives um inflation tends to get higher that thereafter it's actually a very strong leading indicator for higher inflation in the case of this recent uh 2024 situation those uh buy-in advanced motives they plunged as soon as the presidential transition was complete um but by the beginning of 2025 people felt that it was pretty much too late to avoid those price increases and indeed we did not see assist that uh sustaining of that search of big [00:23:40] Speaker 2: ticket purchasing into the new year okay so then going back to the um overall sentiment index itself so as you can see the down the overall trajectory has been down over the last couple years now um of the five core questions that we talked about uh did we see a decline uh across the board across all five or were [00:23:58] Joanne Shu: there particular areas that suffered the most uh personal finances was was has been one that's been um tracking this most strongly and leading this most strongly and i think this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise particularly in the downward trend that we saw leading into 2022 um and and also in 20 25 and 26 because consumers those were the periods where inflation was um trending up um and as i mentioned inflation high prices that's the number one factor on consumers minds right now with with the living standards um that being said there's been a tremendous amount of correlation between those between those five uh business conditions as well as personal finances have have more or less been moving together during this period but that's not always the case i'm curious and i'll bring up a few other [00:24:47] Speaker 2: stats for you but but i'm curious uh does uh the survey ask the respondent uh for their household [00:24:55] Joanne Shu: income or net wealth yes so we ask people what their household income is we don't have quite have a net wealth a net wealth measure uh one of the things that i learned uh working at the federal reserve for so many years is that it to collect an accurate wealth number requires probably one hour of interviewing by itself but we do get i think a pretty decent proxy uh we have we ask people if they own a risky asset like stocks and we ask them the size of their portfolio so that's i think a little bit easier to answer than giving us everything on their balance sheet and if they're a homeowner we get their gross real estate wealth we ask them for the value of of their home but we don't collect we don't ask people to bring out their mortgage statements so we don't know what their net real estate wealth is um that being said i think that um uh you know if we're trying to classify respondent into high wealth or low wealth the the size of the stock holdings and um the size of your house is a pretty especially the stock holdings is a pretty decent measure yeah and that's something i've been watching very closely i was [00:25:56] Speaker 2: gonna say uh because if you look at uh this chart here for example this is the distribution of household wealth in the us uh by income distribution so as you can see the wealthiest uh well it breaks it down by 0.1 and then one percent and then ten percent but the wealthiest ten percent you can see that their wealth measures have changed broadly in line with the growth of the stock market uh whereas the bottom fifty percent has less of a correlation so just overlay this mentally with this chart here which is the s p 500 you can see that it's gone down in 2022 climbed up at the exact same time the stock market was recovered uh peaks and troughs have more or less coincided with peaks and troughs local peaks and troughs of the s p 500 that is not applicable to the consumer sentiment index um i don't see a correlation at all i find that surprising to you um i don't think it should be that surprising because [00:26:51] Joanne Shu: most people don't have very large portfolios so if you look at the highest wealth uh consumers and in the survey uh they uh they feel much better about the economy than people who don't own stock or have very low levels of stock um and so with the um the record highs that we've been seeing in stock markets over the last couple of years we see that supporting high high wealth consumers whereas low wealth consumers they have not moved whatsoever and why should they right they don't own any stock they're not they don't feel like they're personally benefiting from from uh from the rising stock market um and they're forming their views of of the economy in a different way the other thing to note is is that um you know there are people who have very large stock portfolios whose personal finances are being boosted by these stock markets um but even even even so when we ask them about the macro economy or what factors are are driving their views uh they are you know they're giving factors that might be less correlated with with the stock market so you know they're they talk about like my portfolio is doing great but i'm worried this won't last um and and so um you know i think that the factors that are driving stock market performance aren't necessarily the same factors that are driving consumer confidence [00:28:17] Speaker 2: yeah um i i wonder if we can use this as evidence that the stock market isn't reflective of the overall economy if that by the way is a big academic debate it's a debate on media on my show as well um some people argue with the leading indicators people say there's absolutely no relationship but if we're looking at this and saying objectively well yeah the stock market moves in one way and consumer sentiment moves in another way clearly like you said people don't own large stock holdings um my my my my question is if the stock market is has an impact let's say on economic growth which is to say if companies earnings do well you can start to say uh financial conditions will trickle down to the masses uh that isn't reflected in the data what would you respond to that uh well one thing i would [00:29:06] Joanne Shu: note is that when we're looking at stock market indices um you know different indices include different types of firms and one of the key things that we've seen over the last couple of years that so much of the growth is being driven by a very small number of firms and there seems to be consensus that this is being driven by anticipated benefits coming out of ai investments so there are a lot of aspects of the aspects of the economy that aren't really related to this um and maybe on a dollar basis um that may not seem that big relative to the size of these uh you know magnificent magnificent seven or or other ai serving uh facing facing firms but they're just as important for you know consumer experiences and the macro economy um and and i think that's only being amplified as ai stocks ai related stocks are increasing in value and they're getting weighted more over time so like i i think that um insofar that all parts of the economy are going to be correlated with these few firms yes then you're going to see a correlation um but when there's uh more of uh separation and how different parts of the economy are doing you're going to see less correlation um and you know just imagine what's going on in the middle east right now with the closure of the strait of hormuz some industries are exposed to that more some are exposed less you know um some are exposed more to oil prices and some some some are not so it's not going to move all together at the same time and when we're looking at aggregate performance in the stock market depends on those weights yeah and uh here i'm just as an exercise [00:30:45] Speaker 2: i've plotted uh the inflation rate versus the sentiment index uh the consumer sentiment index from the university of michigan here um again not very close but roughly inverse relationship i know these colors are both blue but uh one is uh one is inflation this one's inflation and then the sentiment index is the other um roughly i i mean i i it's probably too simplistic to say that it's just inversely correlated to inflation but if you look at this chart how would you interpret this [00:31:10] Joanne Shu: it right now we're seeing in multiple parts of the survey inflation prices number one factor for consumers cost of living number one factor so in this post post pandemic period that's that's pretty much it it's things i mean um people are responding to changes in the cost of living people are responding to changes in their purchasing power this isn't always the case right like we had 40 years close to 40 years of much more moderate inflation um and in that period particularly in that 10-year period between the great recession and the pandemic no one was thinking about inflation like barely anyone was mentioning anything about cost of living i mean when they talked about cost of living it was with respect to their income about the numerator less so about the denominator um but um because inflation was so stable in the 2010s it just wasn't really a factor and we're just in a different world now yeah that's [00:32:06] Speaker 2: really interesting yeah that's a different paradigm is it almost as bad as 1980s the early 80s [00:32:11] Joanne Shu: you think so the thing with the 80s is that we have to remember that the 80s inflation was the fourth fifth or sixth episode of inflation that we had seen in the pre in the preceding 15 20 years um so inflation there was one episode the an episode in the 60s multiple episodes in the 70s and and consumers have pretty much gotten used to this idea that inflation goes up it'll come back down and it's going to come roaring back again um within a year or so people really got used to that and that was the reason why it was so painful to drive inflation down with the vulgar disinflation in the 80s um so we're in i mean what we all worry about is are we in that situation again we're kind of an inflationary episode number two so the first one was 20 that peaked in 2022 but in the two years after that inflation was slowly coming down and then um by the end of 2024 you know we were still above target but we were a lot lower than we were in 2022 and then in last year and this year it's picking up again and so you know are we on our way to a 1980s style situation in the next five to ten years i sure hope not um but that that is one of the big worries so i guess that answers my next question which is what [00:33:32] Speaker 2: consumers need to feel more confident so they need more price stability what would need to happen to convince the consumers in this survey that we have a return to price stability and that maybe lower inflation by a few months isn't just a temporary measure we need to see sustained reductions and slow [00:33:52] Joanne Shu: down in inflation now consumers tell us they want deflation and you know any economist knows that that's when that happens that's uh something that really bad is happening in the economy i don't think that's necessary to uh people say they want deflation but they don't actually want deflation in real life because of all the other things that come with deflation but they definitely want to see disinflation um and we just haven't seen sustained disinflation in quite some time at this at this point you know one or two months of disinflation really is not enough needs to it needs to continue uh going on that downward softening trajectory for consumers to uh to feel better about things just side note and we'll [00:34:35] Speaker 2: close off soon joanne what is your personal sentiment on the federal reserves policy should we have a zero percent inflation target i mean why even target two percent if the goal here is to make consumers happy [00:34:47] Joanne Shu: well the the goal actually is to deliver price stability as well as maximum employment and that that that that's congress that's mandated by congress um and and so you know it's it's a challenge for the central bank any central bank to have to to balance a dual mandate um you know a two percent um target is actually relatively recent it wasn't always specified what that target was and then also you know it wasn't always the case um that the fed uh viewed deviations above two the same way as uh symmetrically with deviations below two um you know so i leave it to the policy makers to define that dual mandate but when it when it comes to uh consumer well-being um you know i think that dual mandate if you can achieve it is something that delivers that when there is solid employment and people feel confident about their incomes um if they feel like they can plan and understand where price uh that slow and steady inflation and for price stability it makes it easier for them to uh to make economic decisions um and it's easier for them to feel like they're thriving in the economy and right now they just don't feel [00:36:00] Speaker 2: like they're thriving in the economy all right i'll just leave this on the screen final question what uh based on available data and the research and the news that you're seeing right now how confident are you that the consumer sentiment index is on an uptrend sustained uptrend back towards maybe pre-pandemic [00:36:16] Joanne Shu: levels we need to see some resolution with the straight of hormones before i can express any confidence that we are on a sustained upper trajectory if the straight or hormones may sometimes be open sometimes be closed if and the reason for that is because that affects energy prices and um we need this um and if energy prices are are continuing to bounce up and down at an elevated level that's going to pass through to gas prices and and it has the risk to pass through to prices of other goods as well um and so we we need to see some stability there we need to see some stability with energy prices and gas prices before we can uh before i can feel like we're on steady footing in terms of an upward trajectory for sentiment excellent [00:37:00] Speaker 2: well absolutely thank you very much joanne appreciate your thoughts where can you go to follow your work [00:37:05] Joanne Shu: uh you can go to our website www.sca.isr.umich.edu we put out data approximately every two weeks and and uh you can you can get a lot of our reports right there okay we'll put the links down there and [00:37:20] Speaker 2: uh yeah if you're in the us please do participate in the survey um yeah i think it's a very uh very useful tool for everybody um in the um you know in the investment community and policy makers alike probably one of the most followed consumer sentiment indexes in the world so thank you very much joanne for your continued updates we appreciate your time take care thank you so much thank you please do follow joanne and the university of michigan in links down below