The weekly ANZ/Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence print is out and without much ado fell nearly 2% after rising 0.8% in the previous week. The reasons are obvious, given the $100billion plus lost on the ASX200 so far this week from the China ructions.
Here’s the gist from the source:
- Concerns around China’s economic growth prospects and volatility on global financial markets are likely to have had an impact on consumer confidence this week.
- The fall was largely driven by a dip in consumers’ views towards their current finances (-9.9%), which recorded the largest fall since March 2012.
- Consumers’ views towards their future financial position also deteriorated. This sub-index has fallen 5.8% over the past three surveys and is now below its long run average.
- The subindex on ‘economic conditions in next 12 months’ fell a modest 0.3%, whereas ‘economic conditions in next 5 years’ rose 2.6%, providing some offset to overall confidence.
And Warren Hogan’s views:
Last week’s financial market volatility made headlines everywhere, and appears to have impacted the confidence of Australian consumers. The large losses on local and overseas share markets has hit consumers’ perception of their personal finances, with this sub-index falling almost 10% in just one week.
That said, overall consumer confidence remains above its long run average and well above the levels seen for much of the last two years. The recent volatility will need to persist and heighten concerns about the health of the world economy for this to translate into a meaningful drop in confidence that could impact consumption and investment.
It only need persist for another week or two and confidence will bolt!
Heres the overall chart going back to 2012, showing the last six months bulging with confidence:
Although future expectations are coming back to the mean – this chart reminds me of something else..ASX200 anyone?
And there’s kind of a lagging correlation here between consumer confidence and employment growth, but I think its been data mined a bit. Proceed with caution adding both together: