Consumer confidence, existing home sales soar past expectations

Money/CNN ^ | April 27, 2004 | Money/CNN

[Bonaventure]

BREAKING NEWS: April consumer confidence, March existing home sales both soar above expectations. Details coming.

[Bonaventure]

Looks like great news -- not only for Americans in general, but also for the president.

[smiley]

The month of May will be very, very merry, indeed...:)

[lormand]

Another bad day for liberalism

[TheBigB]

IT'S BUSH'S FAULT!!

[Coop]

The market just jumped about 50 points in ten minutes.

[theDentist]

Tom Daschle is saddened. Very very saddened.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumer confidence improved strongly in April, helped by a brightening job picture, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.

The Consumer Confidence Index rose to 92.9, up from a revised 88.5 in March, the New York-based group said. That was better than the 88.5 that analysts had expected.

Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, said the improvement was sparked by a more favorable assessment of current business and labor market conditions and increased consumer optimism about the next six months.

"The job market, which has a major impact on confidence, appears to be gaining strength," she said. "The percentage of consumers claiming jobs are hard to get is now at its lowest level since November 2002, and more consumers expect this trend to continue."

[OXENinFLA]

[Fury]

Just bought a new 'frig on Saturday and more purchases on the way. Was going to wait until late Summer, but I think raw materials are going to cost a bit more soon, so took advantage of the good prices now...

[NYC Republican]

Excellent. Where's the ibligatory saddened Daschle pic???

[GailA]

hanoi john is saddened along with dashole and the rest of the RATS

[dighton]

[Dales]

The market likes:

Charts from Yahoo! Finance

Dow Industrials

NASDAQ Composite

S&P 500

[mlbford2]

bought my first DVD player on Saturday.

[NYC Republican]

ibligatory = obligatory.

[1Old Pro]

Can it get any worse for the Dems. All this good news is terrible news for the Dems.

[VRWC_minion]

Can you spell "next bubble" ?

[Semper Paratus]

I think raw materials are going to cost a bit more soon, so took advantage of the good prices now...

I'll bet that just the threat of inflation will have a big effect on spending now as this micro example is showing.

[kevkrom]

Doing our part -- we just bought a new sectional sofa to replace a "beater" couch in our rec room.

[Bonaventure]

I hope we're not looking at a bubble, but I don't know enough about economics to offer a considered opinion.

Let's hope the April jobless numbers are good. "Jobless recovery" was the Democrats' most potent slogan. It shouldn't have been, of course, because unemployment is near historic lows, but their most brilliant move in the run-up to this campaign season was to shine the spotlight on jobless numbers. It was a big gamble and it looks as if it may not pay off for them, but you never know. Weren't there some disappointing weekly numbers in the middle of the month?