Consumer sentiment inches lower for April: UMich survey

The University of Michigan's preliminary Consumer Sentiment Index for April came out below expectations, reporting the print at 77.9 against estimates of 79.0. Yahoo Finance Anchors Seana Smith and Madison Mills examine the consumer data and how stocks (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) are reacting to first-quarter earnings results out from major banks JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup (C), and Wells Fargo (WFC).

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: And we've got some breaking data out for you. University of Michigan's consumer sentiment coming in below expectations falling to 77.9 the preliminary reading for the month of April that was below the Street's expectations and down from the prior month of 79.4. So a bit of a decline here in this index for the prelim reading.

Now consumers perceive the little change in the state of the economy since the start of the new year. And a couple of other things I want to point out within this report. The increases in inflation expectations were modest enough that consumers do not appear worried that high inflation will come roaring back. Also that consumers are fully aware that inflation has come down substantially since 2022.

They are not, though, satisfied by the current pace of disinflation. So the pricing, obviously, the fact that pricing still remains elevated at these current levels worrying consumers to a degree here. And as a result, we're seeing consumer sentiment fall a bit from the previous reading. The prelim reading, Maddie, coming in at 77.9 that was down from 79.4 the prior month.

And again, we're still looking at losses across the board for all three of the major averages.

MADISON MILLS: We are looking at those losses, Seana. I was just trying to pull up so that I could get an indication here of the degree to which the market is dropping specifically off of that consumer sentiment index report. Here we see that we are getting a little bit of a red candlestick after that. Not as much to the downside following those bank earnings from this morning, which of course, are going to be pressuring these stocks today.

But as you mentioned we even have the tech-heavy NASDAQ down 8/10 of a percent so far this morning, which is particularly interesting given that we saw a buying the dip-- buying that pullback sentiment coming in from traders yesterday after stocks fell on Wednesday. So I'm curious to see to what extent we start to see a change in that throughout the course of the day today.

I want to see if I can get a look at how we've seen the NASDAQ performing over the past five days here. Yes, you are starting to see that dip coming in this morning. So the question remains as to whether or not that's going to continue throughout the rest of the day here.