Consumer Confidence Falls Amid Global Market Tumble

Consumer confidence fell a full point over the past two weeks to its lowest point since last December, according to the HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI). However, this may overstate the strength of consumer confidence today. When looking at the three-day rolling average, the ESI fell more than three points over the weekend in the wake of the stock market crash. While consumer confidence has been gradually falling all summer, this last month marks the sharpest decline since late January / early February.

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The three-day moving average saw some volatility at the beginning of the two-week period, but began to fall sharply late last week.

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Consumer confidence in making a major purchase saw the largest drop among the five components of the index. Confidence in personal finances and in the housing market also fell. Conversely, confidence in the U.S. economy and in the labor market each rose a point. Both components have been fairly steady this year.

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The next release of the ESI will be September 8.

About the Index

The HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (“ESI”) is a “living” index that measures U.S. adults’ expectations for the economy going forward, as well as their feelings about current conditions for major purchases. The primary goal of the Index is to accurately measure movements in overall national economic sentiment, and to provide a more sophisticated alternative to existing economic sentiment indices. Unlike other prominent indices that release consumer sentiment estimates infrequently, the HPS-CivicScience Index is updated in real time as responses are collected continuously every hour, every day. Large-scale cross-tabulation of survey responses and consumer attributes enable more granular analyses than are currently possible through prevailing measures.

For a more detailed overview of the Index and the underlying methodology, please request a white paper.

About Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS)

Hamilton Place Strategies is a policy, advocacy, and communications consulting firm with a focus and expertise at the intersection of government, business, and media.

For more information, visit Hamilton Place Strategies by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @HPSInsight.

About CivicScience

CivicScience, Inc. provides the leading intelligent polling and real-time consumer insights platform, the InsightStore™. Its proprietary platform powers the world’s opinions and quickly gets that data to the decision makers who care. Every day, CivicScience polls ask millions of people questions related to thousands of topics, while its powerful data science and big data technology analyzes current consumer opinions, discovers trends as they start, and accurately predicts future behaviors and market outcomes. CivicScience polls run on hundreds of premier websites, in addition to its own public polling site at www.civicscience.com. CivicScience’s InsightStore™ is used by leading enterprises in marketing research, advertising, media, financial services, and political polling. For more information, visit CivicScience by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @CivicScience.