Original source：Goldman Sachs & Co. LLCFirst published on Unhidea：Original source date：
Key takeaway
US consumers became more positive about both current conditions and future prospects, and new-home sales also proved steadier than expected, though concerns about prices remain.
How much did consumer confidence rebound?
The Conference Board’s October consumer confidence index rose to 91.7, up 7.5 points from the upwardly revised September reading of 84.2. It was well above Goldman Sachs’s forecast and the market consensus of 81.0, and returned to around its level at the start of the year.
The improvement came from two components: the present situation index rose 8.6 points to 120.4, and the expectations index rose 6.9 points to 72.6. This means consumers were more positive about both the present and the future than in September.
How did perceptions of jobs and prices change?
The share of respondents saying jobs were plentiful rose to 26.7%, while the share saying jobs were hard to get held steady at 21.4%. The difference between the two rose 2.4 percentage points to 5.3%, recovering the sharp decline of the previous month.
Median inflation expectations for the next 12 months fell 0.4 percentage points to 4.7%, but remained 0.2 percentage points above their level in February, before the war began. In consumers’ free-form responses, mentions of prices, groceries, and gasoline and diesel prices continued to increase.
Comments about war and conflict declined for a second consecutive month but remained at a high level; the cutoff date for the preliminary survey results was 21 October.
Where did new-home sales show greater resilience than expected?
US sales of newly built single-family homes fell 0.6% month over month in September, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 676 thousand homes. The decline was smaller than Goldman Sachs’s forecast of 4.8% and the market consensus of 4.5%; both had previously forecast an annual rate of 651 thousand homes.
The annualized sales rate for August was revised down by 4000 homes to 680 thousand homes. Sales in the South and Midwest fell 6.6% and 7.3%, respectively, in September, partially giving back the largest monthly percentage increase on record for the series in August; sales in the Northeast and West rose 28.0% and 21.4%, respectively.
