Gasoline costs that have dropped by about 20 cents a gallon in the past month from an almost three-year high may continue to support sentiment. At the same time, falling home prices and slowing job growth may cause households to limit spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was little changed today after sinking 2.3 percent yesterday. The gauge rose 0.1 percent to 1,315.69 at 9:40 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities dropped, since the yield on the benchmark 10-year note up to 2.99 percent from 2.94 percent late yesterday.
The rise in the comfort gauge over the past two weeks has been within the survey’s margin of error of 3 percentage points.
While the gain “isn’t that statistically significant, the shift in direction, nonetheless, is a welcome one,” Gary Langer, president of Langer Research Associates LLC in New York, which compiles the index for Bloomberg, said in a statement.
Each of the three components of the Bloomberg comfort index gained last week, the figures showed.
The personal-finances gauge rose to minus 13.4 from minus 13.7 the previous week. A 3.1 percentage-point increase in the last two weeks failed to make up for ground lost over the prior four weeks. It was the 13th consecutive week in which a minority of Americans rated their own finances positively.
The buying-climate index increased to minus 53.1 from minus 55.8 the previous week. It’s still close to the minus 57.4 reached March 13 that was the lowest since October 2009.
A gauge of Americans’ views of the economy was minus 74.6 compared with minus 75.7 the prior week.
“Gas has stopped rising; consumer confidence has stopped falling,” said Langer. “Life sometimes is that simple.”
The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline nationally dropped to $3.79 on May 29, down from $3.84 a week earlier, according to AAA, the nation’s largest auto club. It reached $3.99 on May 4, the highest since July 2008.
“It’s still a challenging market and consumers remain price-sensitive, particularly with rising fuel costs,” Peter Lynch, chairman and president of Jacksonville, Florida-based grocery chain Winn-Dixie Stores Inc., said on a May 17 conference call. “But consumers are slowly starting to return to more traditional buying patterns."
The comfort index was minus 6.3 among people with household incomes exceeding $100,000 a year, negative for a third week and below its 2010 and 2011 averages. The 1.4 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in May, the biggest monthly decrease in shares since August, may be starting to concern people at the higher income brackets, Langer said.
Confidence among women has soured after climbing during April, the report showed. The gender gap widened to more than 10 points for the first time in eight weeks, with men at minus 41.5 and women at minus 52.2.
After adding 768,000 workers to payrolls in the first four months of the year, hiring may be about to cool as companies try to compensate for rising commodity costs.
Job gains in May are forecast at 170,000, down from 244,000 in April, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg before tomorrow’s payrolls report. Unemployment is forecast to fall to 8.9 percent from 9 percent.
Jobless claims decreased less than forecast last week, indicating the labor market is struggling to pick up. Applications dropped by 6,000 to 422,000 in the week ended May 28, according to Labor Department figures released today. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had predicted a drop to 417,000.
A housing market struggling to stabilize is also weighing on consumers’ spirits as home values fall.
Property values in 20 U.S. cities dropped in March to the lowest level since 2003, showing housing remains mired in a slump almost two years into the economic recovery. The S&P/Case-Shiller index fell 3.6 percent from March 2010, the biggest year-over-year decline since November 2009, the group said this week.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index is based on responses to telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 consumers aged 18 and over. Each week, 250 respondents are asked for their views on the economy, personal finances and buying climate; the percentage of negative responses is subtracted from the share of positive views and divided by three.
The comfort index can range from 100, indicating every participant in the survey had a positive response to all three components, to minus 100, signaling all views were negative. The margin of error for the headline reading is 3 percentage points.
