US economic activity - what's the latest
UNITED STATES
Consumer confidence & Retail sales
Very low CONFIDENCE | 49.8
Strong SALES | 7.5%
UNITED STATES
Industrial Production
Strong | 102.7
UNITED STATES
Weekly Economic Index
Solid | 3.1
Insights
CONCEPTS
Consumer Confidence measures financial optimism to predict future spending, while Retail Sales track real-world consumer behavior. Industrial Production measures economic output in manufacturing, mining, utilities and construction. Export Growth tracks foreign demand for domestic goods. The Weekly Economic indicator is the high-speed cousin of the PMI: if PMIs capture monthly corporate sentiment, the WEI condenses 10 high-frequency, hard data points into a real-time look at GDP growth.
CURRENT READINGS
MARKET IMPLICATIONS
Elevated consumer sentiment typically fuels robust spending and drives economic expansion while collapsing confidence triggers defensive saving, a behavior that can cause the economy to slow-down. When resilient spending takes place despite low confidence, it signals a pessimistic but well-capitalized consumer.
Industrial production help us prove if soft sentiment data is translating into hard corporate revenue. Surging output drives capital expenditure, hiring and earnings, acting as a major tailwind for equities.
The Weekly Economic Indicator (WEI) acts as our real-time radar, condensing high-frequency economic activity into a single rolling growth metric that bridges the gap between these monthly data releases.
Rising exports indicate strong foreign demand that injects external capital into the domestic economy, driving outperformance in globally exposed equities. The opposite is true with fading retail spending, industrial production and exports.