American consumer confidence, as measured by the Thomson Reuters/Ipsos Primary Consumer Sentiment Index, is steady in November, 2018. “The stock market has been more volatile than usual in recent months,” reports Chris Jackson, Vice President at survey research firm Ipsos.”This volatility is likely freezing the most measurable indices. Consumers are hesitant to invest or plan for growth in the the job market, but they are displaying general optimism that the economy will be better tomorrow than it is today. They look up to the future but aren’t quite ready to act on those feelings today.” Jharonne Martis, Director of Consumer

American consumer confidence, as measured by the Thomson Reuters/Ipsos Primary Consumer Sentiment Index, is relatively steady this October. This month, the PCSI stands at 62.5, a 0.3 point decrease from last month. “Last month the Jobs Index reached an apex, but the other sub-indices indicated that consumers didn’t see much of a path forward for continued job market improvements,” reports Chirs Jackson, Vice President at survey research firm Ipsos. Jharonne Martis, Director of Consumer Research at Refinitiv, said, ‘Likewise, the Thomson Reuters Same Store Sales Index estimate remains steady with a robust 3.6% growth for the third quarter. This bodes

American consumer confidence, as measured by the Thomson Reuters/Ipsos Primary Consumer Sentiment, goes into March 2018 holding steady from the previously upward trend, standing pat at 63.1. Last month’s measure set a new post-Recession high and March will tie that mark. The stay in the index this month appears to derive from counterbalancing opinions on the current and future state of the economy. Consumer confidence in the current economy and in their current financial situation increased, but these increases were offset by decreases in confidence in the future economy and in future financial situations. To download the full report, click

Can we find out more about the trajectory of a country’s economy by looking past the headline unemployment numbers and delving deeper into the job prospects of various demographic groups?  For example, does job loss amongst higher income or higher education individuals tell us more than job loss amongst the lower educated or lower Income?  Or, is a lack of job security amongst a family’s primary earner a more troubling sign than if less people depended on that income? To answer these questions, we undertook a study using data from The Thomson Reuters/IPSOS Primary Consumer Sentiment Index.  The PCSI contains

The Thomson Reuters/Ipsos Primary Consumer Sentiment Index (PCSI) is a comprehensive data set which measures current and forward looking consumer feelings towards a wide range of economic conditions across 24 countries.  In this research note, we examine one possible application of the PCSI.  Specifically, we constructed simple signals from the individual components and tested these signals in country rotation strategies with one and six month rebalance periods. Our best performing tests produced annualized long-only returns over 15%, long-short spread returns near 10%, and demonstrate one way PCSI can add value to any top down analysis. In this Research Note, we