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Hopium High As Consumer Sentiment Follows September 2008 Path
Yay verily, Michigan Consumer Sentiment jumped more than expected and there was rejoicing all around. Of course, a simple scratch beneath the surface reveals what many realists suspect, expectations for the future are the major driver of the headline number. Unfortunately we have seen exactly this pattern before. Not only are the levels and changes similar to Q3/Q4 2008 but the underlying events (recessionary concerns, banking liquidity concerns, crisis of confidence) are eerily similar. The we've-been-down-so-long-it-has-to-get-better crowd psychology is intriguing as the rise in hope over the past four months is the largest in over 30 months as the delta between current reality and the green green grass of next year drops. While animal spirits are arguably of interest in short-term macro cycles, we note that the ramps in the hopium index tend to last 4-5 months at most and that is where we are now.
The upper pane is the Expectations (hope) index and the lower pane shows the four-month rate of change - impressively expectant of a miracle off such lowly lows.
More importantly, look at the red ovals in the chart above. Comparing the current and expectations indices to the period around Lehman in 2008 suggests a very similar picture of reality. Interestingly, perhaps we are just a little more jaded (and less optimistic) now as the hope index was unable to rise as much as it did back then and we all know how well that period ended!
Charts: Bloomberg
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People always feel better this time of year....then the credit card bills come rolling in on January.
The Democrats muslim has wee wee'ed everything up. Maybe Democrat Jon Corzine can replace Biden on the ticket.
this is consumer SENTIMENT and is a SURVEY.........wait for consumer CONFIDENCE as it will also be up due to the fact the S&P 500 is a component, so the number is entirely BS.......as is this one.....bonuses all around!
Can most of us agree that NONE of the data is legitimate? Even my beloved debt clock is probably off by many multiples, but I still love it though.
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
--Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain)
The Bernank, with help from the Bureau of Lies & Statistics, and every scratch payola Econ 101 Keynesian Priest on college campuses, is trying as hard as he can to engineer a soft impaling.
WTF, S&P500 should be down 30pts today. Nothing of substance or vision came out from Europe, there is no reason to rally.
PPT working overtime in the low volume markets? Things just aren't adding up at all right now.
doesn't matter.....as EU goes, so goes ES
We're all just USD/Euro traders now. No other correlations exist.
Hopium is a helluva drug...
Give my regards to the always lovely Susan.
Where's Marla? I need a holiday house mix...
I do miss her taste in music.
Consumer confidence is merely a test of whether the illusion machine is working, its part of the feedback loop the oligarchy uses for designing their programming to keep the masses slumbering in their dream world.
Truly Hopium is a powerful narcotic.
Ah, first one to pick that. Good job! We here at Bruce's Bar & Grill wish You a merry christmas!
Amerikkkans are pros at believing that which does not or cannot rationally exist.
We're not eternal optimists - we're eternal ostriches.
Shut up - the unicorns and leprechauns might hear you and fail to bring rain for the crops this spring as punishment.
Hence the frenetic consumerism.
Buy before you die!
You can't take it with you so spend it all now!!
Instant Gratification (its still too slow for me)
Faith and Hope are the American mantra.
The problem with that is that "Faith" is a belief in something for which there is no evidence and "Hope" is a lousy strategy.
Faith, to an American, is believing "their" team is going to win this weekend.
Or next Fall.
Hope is all that remains when reality has left you with nothing else.
Hey brother can you spare some hope?
Hope springs eternal *for 4 or 5 months*
No hope without dope, get yer fresh hopium here.
Drugs not hugs, wrap yourself in the warm cocoon of mothers arms, she will love you forever, have another puff from the hopium pipe, can you see her yet? She's smiling she wants you to buy more hopium...
We've now got 50 year financing, go ahead buy some more, why wait with interest rates so low?
I wonder what the results of this 'consumer confidence survey" would be if they conducted this survey someplace other than just the Hamptons?
I wonder where they get their data. Probably the same people they've been sampling for the last 50 years. All boomers on SS now. Hope fluctuates depending on how threatened they perceive their government benefits.
I'd be interested to see this plotted against the retail price of gasoline in the past year. I'm guessing it would explain 85 to 95% of that rate of change graph. And those few extra dollars of cash in the pocket of Mr & Ms Consumer won't be enough to power much of a spending spree in the coming months.
Interesting point..
I wonder if Obama's SPR release wasn't timed to bloat inventories about now.. it take a few month's for that kind of move to show up in the system.
I guess the good news is that we can all expect a nice quiet weekend now and through the next couple weeks leading up to sugar plum fairies and merry ol' Saint Nick..
or we could be in for a real nutcracker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8At8zfh_o3E
Who is confident things will get better? Those who think someone else is going to pay for their 15 kids. Woman With 15 Kids: "Somebody needs to be held accountable, and they need to pay." - YouTube
Shiiiiit, that's like eurozone!
OMG! I'm still laughing!
When you can just print money out of thin air and people accept it as payment for things of value, everything becomes warped and distorted. Hopefully, we're at the tail end.
You know, SD1, this woman is the penultimate goal of the 0.1%ers, with their mercury-laden poison needles from the day you're born, the fluoridated water, the K-12 prison/indoctrination system, TeeVee, toxic food, video games, etc. Completely retarded, no self-control, dependant on the goobermunt to survive.
The perfect sheeple specimen. I can just see some bald-headed, hook-nosed, elephant-eared, beanie-wearing, inbred freak leaning back in his leather office chair with a satisfied smile saying, "Excellllllant!" like Montgomery Burns on "The Simpsons".
Welcome to Duhmerikka.
It's a bad idea to make financial decisions based on consumer confidence data.
everyone's hoping oBLAHma gets re-elected, especially when the planned iran war takes place next september, october. isn't it true oBLAHma, that a president has never failed to be re-elected during a war?
Anyone who continually tries to use the markets as a proxy for the actual economy needs to get help.
There is a difference between 2008 and now. Only good news counts.
Consumers are feeling much more confident with all of the guns they bought on Black Friday.
Wildly swinging manic/depressive 'indicator', means nothing.
The fact that the hopium index has been unable to rise to 2008 levels correlates perfectly with the increase in Zero Hedge readership. As dumb as we may be, we are learning.
"green green grass of next year drops..."
yea verifly i say unto thee and all of the children of oligarchia, it is neither of green grass nor of brown leaves in which ye should place thy trust. but yea it is even the green shoots of yesteryear in which thou shouldst hope.....
and the lord of hosts will send forth legions of skittle shitting unicorns to sprinkle pixie dust and buckets of feces until thine eyes are of rich fertile nile delta and thine offspring as scattered bones....
[thuh] [puhb-lik] [iz] [stoo-pid]
If the news media would cover the US rather than the distraction in Europe, people would be more incline to undersatnd the country is folding. Of course, this is by design, keep the focus away from the clowns in DC.
Dominoes Pizza 52-week highs
$5 to $35 non-stop the last 3 years
Where is the Eurozone crash and derivatives spiral that was supposed to send the consumers to the poorhouse?
Give Cameron a pizza and let him cool off a bit.
Silly Robot - HFT computers don't need to eat to live.
How's your Dow 30,000 hat doing? And how fun was it to be long about 2,000 points above the current DJIA level?
More proof that Americans are idiots, how can anybody eat that lousy piza?
It's just financialisation extended, Dominoes = food derivatives. The ingredients are similar but it tastes its worth... which is shit.
European dominoes will be eating each other, shortly.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered a Dominoes pizza. It was delivered by a frail woman at least 60 years old. That's our future. We're going to rob the old, the young, and the savers to protect the bankers.
Change "We're going to rob the old etc" to
we are robbing the old etc
It is happening real time, right now, right here.
There is no future, there is only now.
The future is a dream and the past is just a history of now.
All we really have is now. Be in the moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9pRa9W832E
Dominoes is the model for the future. Their R&D department is revolutionizing the industry and nutrition.
http://www.theonion.com/video/dominos-scientists-test-limits-of-what-humans-will,14252/
I just read a story that stocks are up becuase Euro nations agreed on a new treaty. A story under that said that a new treaty was almost agreed on by all Euro nations other than England, which give traders optimism that the Euro crisis is solved.
There was a story linked to the other story closer to the mark saying that three nations had serious objections to the new treaty but agree that some further integration is needed to help stem the crisis.
In one news block you have such a wide swath of BS reporting that it is impossible for the uninformed to ever get the real story. Of course that is on purpose. The only real reporting is what will let HFTs levitate the market.
The false premise that a rising stock market = a healthy economy rules the minds of our politihacks and banksters.
Read the same bs on YahooFinance. Funny right? And what about traders and the movement of the market. These stories print to make it look like "sophisticated investors" are following the story to an investment. But it's really the other way around and we all know it here. The "manipulative investors" move first, then the story prints, then the sheepsters are asked to follow or trust that it's all a-okay.
So, we know the reality here and at least for me it's much move soothing to know that I know what they know so their's no sense in expecting anything other. Otherwise, I'd be the definition of insane.
This is sort of Thelma & Louise-at-the-rim-of-the-canyon type hopium.
Edit: wife made me watch it.
+1 for the edit
Reality will set in again when the ratings are cut across the EU...pulling AAAs out of the EFSF is real and will have real ramifications unlike a paper accord to get cozier fiscally...ridiculous
Irecently referred to this as, "The American Consumer is Throwing in the Towel." The real jobless numbers show the disconnect between the American consumer's spending habits and their expectation of the economy. The details can be found here.
http://blog.commodityandderivativeadv.com/2011/12/08/the-american-consum...
Well, I see that consumers using 74% of cash to pay for things, as possibly a good thing.
I'll be "Life Black" at Q2 2012; I thin kwha tAmericans NEED to do is stop buying cars/homes/misc shit with credit and start building real saving and wealth. That will send a message to the power that (think) they be to change shit.
"That will send a message to the power that (think) they be to change shit."
I think you're dreaming. Well, at least that's not against the law.
Ooooops, sorry, dreaming puts you on terrorist watchlist 1, 1a, 2, 3, 5, 7, and maybe 12. That thingy about using cash puts you on them all.
FREEEEDUMB!
Another post that sets a trail to reality. Haven't we already realized nothing's real anyway? Look at our political juncture right now. It's pretty obvious that the machine has already posititoned for a favorable outcome. 2012 will represent a tremendous push of hopium, avalanche style. Every effort will be made to hold the line and QE for more. ZH day after day demonstrates that the numbskulls know they're in knee deep and their only way out is forward, no matter how lunitic it may be. It's game theory now and upsetting the apple cart is a dominated position which one with wealth never chooses, regardless of emotional ties.
. Confidence rally orchestrated by Fed/ECB etc. to enforce success of European meeting
we havnt even got the last hour bullish rumour yet. Short and caught is how many day daytraders are positioned . Reading ZH is pointless ,bearish articles mean nothing the powers that be want a strong ES they are going to get it .
Is it just me or have we been seeing these presumed comparisons to 2008 & 2009 now for about 2 years running. The markets will not crash. Many cans, many roads to kick them down. Presuming common sense and core financial wisdom when politicians and government economists lives are at stake is the path to ruin.
sunny
Just got an email from the senator to share my story on being unemployment along with some sample stories of people pleading for extensions. Meanwhile the apple crop goes unpicked until they hire inmates from the county jail via THE GUBMINT to go out and pick at $22 an hour and it takes 3 of them to pick a box a day, of course they are only making 33 cents an hour to do this but what the hell. Meanwhile we have another occupy activity this weekend blocking a cargo terminal ( flat screens delayed for christmas?) I noticed a occupy las vegas camp in a huge empty parking lot out by the airport. Are these "occupiers" not just shanty towners with an angle geared toward the liberal white guilt potically correct crowd? and dont forget to lay some Happy Kwansai on your neighbors and fellow workers etc. oops I forgot what they call it.
Things aren't adding up now is right.
TBH, the people as a whole, are just ignorant. Just like their leaders AND media, which is probably the reason the "HOPIUM" is up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQnHwZ1Uxo0&feature=player_embedded
My dad thinks since I got a job, things are looking better. They are not; if he looked at how much I make per year AFTER MA taxes, he'd probably vomit.
BTW, DonutBoy - Don't order Dominoes (unless it is the only thing left in your area/you are hammered at 2am). Frequent and support small business. Decentralization is how we are going to get our of this shit.
Hopium addiction makes you see green...the more hopium you take, the other side of the ponzi fence looks greener...