US consumer confidence remains mostly unchanged in August: a score of 90.4 after 90 last time. It is a small miss in comparison to 91.5 expected but not a disaster after the poor retail sales report. The conditions component misses more sharply with 106.1 points while the expectations component beat with 80.3 points. Business inventories beat with 0.2%. All in all, figures are basically as expected.
Currency reaction is slow. Basically, the poor retail sales report, which is hard data, is set to dominate.
The University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer confidence measure for August was expected to rise to 91.5 points, up from 90 points in the final read for July. The Conditions component was projected to remain unchanged at 109 and the Expectations one to rise from 77.8 to 781. points. At the same time, the business inventories figure was forecast to rise by 0.1% following a rise of 0.2% last time.
The US dollar was on the back foot following a terrible retail sales report.
