Following the slight decline in the U.S consumer confidence index during October, this index rallied in November.
According to the last U.S. consumer confidence survey, the consumer confidence index bounced back in November compared with October’s index: The index reached in November to 56.0 (1985=100) an increase from 40.9 in October. American consumers’ short term outlook in U.S. business conditions has also changed direction and improved according to the report. Furthermore, the consumers’ assessment of current day conditions also improved in November.
Please note that this report was based on a survey conducted up to November 15th. During that time, the market conditions were slightly positive in terms of stock markets, and major commodities. In the past couple of weeks the situation has turned with respect to the financial markets (e.g. the American stock markets indexes declined) so that it may adversely affect the December survey.
This consumer confidence index might curb the recent decline in natural gas prices: according to a paper prepared by Roache et. al (2008) on the effects of news on commodities prices including natural gas prices, there was a positive significant coefficient for “consumer confidence” on natural gas prices i.e. this news has a positive linear influence on natural gas prices. Furthermore, the paper also suggested positive significant coefficient between this news and crude oil prices.
Currently major commodities are traded up:
Current Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (December 2011 delivery) is traded up by 1.17% to $99.36 per barrel as of 17:00*.
Current gold price, short term futures (December 2011 delivery) is traded at $1,715.1 per t oz. a $0.6 increase as of 16:51*.
Euros to US dollar exchange rate is currently traded down at 1.3357 a 0.2763% increase as of 17:13*.
(* GMT)
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