Confidence Is Waning

By Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek): Over the course of the last several months, I have been highlighting the creep of economic data, which I feel is leading toward recession for the U.S. economy. Well, Wednesday produced another economic data point of high concern toward that argument.

By Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek): In a recent article entitled, "Consumers Signal Recession Coming," we highlighted the deteriorating trend of the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index over the past several weeks.

By Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek): Bloomberg's Consumer Comfort Index showed improvement today, but the abrupt change in the weekly measure is deceptive and perhaps simply influenced by pleasant weather in the population dense Northeast U.S.

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Americans have missed out on almost $200 billion of stock gains as they drained money from the market in the past four years, haunted by the financial crisis.

By Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek): The close to the week offered up a sour tasting consumer report, and given the slew of related data produced this week, we thought we would take a look at the state of the American consumer today.

By Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek): The Dow just closed out the best January in 15 years, but the latest investor confidence survey may foreshadow a different sort of February and full 2012. State Street's Investor Confidence Index declined, driven by European risk reduction, but U.S.

RetailSails submits:After climbing to a nearly three-year high at the end of February, recent readings on consumer confidence have plunged as surging gas prices have offset improvements in the economy and consumers’ personal finances. As inflation expectations continue to rise, there are worrying signs that shoppers are already beginning to tighten their wallets.

Markos Kaminis (Wall St. Greek) submits: The reaction of housing stocks to Monday's depressing Housing Market Index seems to say the bad news has been well understood and priced in. The solid earnings report of a housing stock, Lennar, also went far in keeping homebuilder shares in the green today.