Worst Ever Consumer Sentiment: Signal For Economic Collapse? | Joanne Hsu

People say they want deflation, but they don't actually want deflation in real life because of all the other things that come with deflation. Low wealth consumers, they have not moved whatsoever. And why should they? Right? They don't own any stock. They don't feel like they're personally benefiting from the rising stock market. If the stock market has an impact, let's say, on economic growth, you can start to say financial conditions will trickle down to the masses. That isn't reflected in the data. What would you respond to that? We're back with Joanne Xu, director of the Service of Consumers at the University of Michigan. And on the agenda today, whether or not the consumer sentiment is on the mend or whether we're going to see continued weakness into the end of the year. Welcome back to the show, Joanne. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Early in the year, Joanne, we had an episode where the consumer sentiment was the weakest in the University of Michigan's history. A lot of that had to do with higher inflation expectations and the rising oil price. Since then, even though oil has still remained volatile, I believe the print has changed somewhat. Have we seen any evidence so far that consumer sentiment has improved? That's a great question. So first off, I'll note that what was being kind of discussed as an all-time historic low that we saw in May, we really should think about that as being comparable to the previous all-time low, which was actually just four years ago in June of 2022. So I don't think it's really that much of a mystery why people felt so bad relative to mid-2022. In 2022, there was the highest inflation in 40 years, but labor markets were really strong and people had reliable incomes. And right now, we're kind of in a low-hire, low-fire environment and people just don't feel as confident about their incomes. And on top of that, we're in the middle of a very highly uncertain military conflict in the Middle East. So that being said, since May, that trough that we saw there, we've had two consecutive months of pretty strong increases, more than 10% improvements in June, as well as July. We just released this morning the final print for July. So consumers are not feeling nearly as bad as they were in May. But even though we had these big gains the last two months, we're still 11% below where we were a year ago. So overall, consumers still feeling pretty somber about the economy. The reversal that we saw in July, so by the way, I'll leave this here, this was the latest result for July 2026, index of consumer sentiment 55.2, up slightly from 49.5, still down from the previous year's July reading. And yeah, ultimately, the trend is downward, despite the fact that the one month move is up. So was this one month improvement predicated on or built on the improving Iran situation? Or do you think consumers over time have just become accustomed to higher oil prices and therefore it's just desensitivity, so to speak? So what we're seeing is that there's not much evidence that consumers are responding specifically to geopolitical developments. They're really focused on kitchen table issues. And of course, gas prices play a major role in that. So while the reason for gas price fluctuation is the reason that gas prices are much higher now than they were a few months ago, of course, that's due to geopolitical developments. But is there an MOU? Is there a ceasefire? Consumers aren't really responding to that. What they are responding to is the changing gas prices. And overall, for the month of June, we saw some improvement relative to May. But towards the end of the month and ongoing this week, we're seeing additional increases in gas prices, energy prices around the world with continued closure on the Strait of Hormuz. So it seems like it's going to be pretty difficult to sustain this kind of two month streak of strong improvement unless we see some meaningful relief that is sustained. AI mentions have gone down from 1.6 percent two years ago to now 11 percent. They've essentially flatlined since March. In November, when you were on the show last year, you told us AI's effect on sentiment depends entirely on what it does with labor markets. Have we seen any changes in sentiment in regards to AI and layoffs? So what we're seeing, we've seen quite a bit of increases in the share of consumers mentioning AI now relative to the last time when we spoke. What was it? Eight months ago. And what we're seeing now is pretty clearly a mix of people, some of whom are mentioning AI in a positive context, like they're mentioning how it's propping up stock markets, how it might be driving productivity gains or efficiency gains. But then you have a lot of consumers looking at very different factors. They're, again, really worried about the potential impact of AI on labor markets. They talk about the prospect of job loss and layoffs. And then still there's another group of consumers who's focused on data centers, and they're typically talking about data centers in the context of negative externalities. So potential impact on electricity prices in that local area or that state. Some are mentioning potential environmental externalities as well. So really, it's interesting that consumers are really thinking about AI in a variety of ways. On balance at this time, the comments look to be negative on net. That could change in the future. Okay. I'd like to bring up a paper that you co-wrote in 2022. So this is just deviating a little bit from the Michigan survey here. Investor confidence and high financial literacy jointly shape investments in risky assets. Now, broadly speaking, I think your paper finds that confidence in the macro economy drives how much of a portfolio sits in equities separate from financial literacy and separate from risk preferences. Can you just summarize your findings here with your co-authors and whether or not consumer sentiment plays a direct role, the data at least, plays a direct role in how portfolio managers allocate assets? So first of all, I do want to be clear, we're talking about retail investors here managing their own personal portfolios. And I also want to note that we're here, we're using the survey of consumer finances, which is a completely different data set than the Michigan survey. And the confidence measure that we have here, which is about confidence in the macro economy, is not quite the same, but it's highly correlated with one part of what we measure in sentiment, which is expected business conditions. On the consumer sentiment index, we have a 12-month as well as a five-year expected business condition number. So what we are calling investor confidence in this particular paper is highly correlated or has a lot of overlap with the expectations part of the consumer sentiment index. And essentially what we find is that confidence and financial literacy exert separate effects, promoting a portfolio allocation to risky assets like stocks and stock market participation more generally. While gold has grabbed most of the precious metals headlines, the metal with the most torque in a bull cycle is often silver. And there are important macro trends that make the setup hard to ignore right now. First, gold still backs about only 3% of U.S. government debt. If that coverage ratio even partially mean reverted toward prior historical peaks, it implies dramatically higher gold prices, tightening the entire precious metals complex. Second, history shows that after major geopolitical shocks, gold has tended to be one of the best performers in the following months. And when gold runs, silver often follows, then accelerates. Third, with tariffs now viewed as a sticky policy, institutions are increasingly positioning for a weaker dollar regime. A softer dollar is typically supportive for commodities and precious metals. Past performance isn't a guarantee of future performance, but it's a reminder of what silver can do when macro conditions line up. Now, silver futures aren't the only way to play this theme. So next, I want to highlight a silver company, the sponsor of today's video, Kootenay Silver, ticker K-O-O-Y-F, on the U.S. OTC exchange. Kootenay Silver shares are available on Schwab, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, and E-Trade. Kootenay is positioned as a silver pure play, and one thing that stands out immediately is acid density. The company controls four silver projects. 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In a peer comparison presented in the materials, Kootenay is shown around $0.36 per ounce versus a peer group average of around $2.18. Kootenay is scheduled to drill roughly 70,000 meters over the next 12 months, and with a market cap of around $188 million Canadian dollars today. That's about $2,570 of market cap per planned meter. Do your homework on Kootenay Silver today. That's ticker K-O-O-Y-F. Is there, going back to the Consumer Sentiment Index from the Michigan survey, do we have any evidence to suggest that, well, we know the Federal Reserve looks at it, do we have any evidence to suggest that the financial community looks at it to make investment decisions? I mean, based on the feedback that I receive from people, as well as who's commenting and who is downloading our data, it seems pretty clear that people are folding in some information from the surveys of consumers into their decision making, or at least into their research. I will say that any researcher or investor is going to be looking at lots of different data sets, lots of different data points, and if I can help them out in any way with the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, I'm thrilled to do so. Historically, what has been the relationship between sentiment, consumer sentiment, and interest rates, specifically the long end of the yield curve for Treasury yields? The situation right now is that the 10-year and 30-year have been rising. In the last 40, 45 days, it's continued to rise a lot more over the last couple of days since the FOMC kept rates unchanged. Kevin Walsh himself even made a comment that rates have gone up despite the Federal Reserve keeping the Fed Fund's rates unchanged. In other words, the bond market has been kind of doing his job for him. Anyway, a lot of consumer products are linked to the 10-year, and if that goes up, presumably we can see interest costs go up as well, and borrowing costs go up as a result. How have consumers responded to this trend? So consumers are, they're not watching Fed policy at all. And so they're typically not going to be responding to that. They're also not really watching, or most consumers are not watching financial markets looking at these other interest rates. Consumers, what they are reacting to are the economic realities around them. And right now, the number one factor that's influencing consumer behavior and consumer sentiment really is high inflation, high prices. You know, we're now at five years above the Fed's inflation target, and consumers continue to be very, very frustrated by the persistence of high prices. You know, I will note that when it comes to the surveys of consumers, there, we have a few different headline measures that don't always move in concert. So we have, you know, the headline consumer sentiment index, which is an overall snapshot of how consumers feel about the outlook for the economy. But then we also have specific questions on inflation expectations, and that's another number, a set of numbers that are very closely watched by the Federal Reserve. And so when you hear policymakers talking about consumer views, they actually talk about inflation expectations more than they talk about sentiment itself. But both are headline numbers. And the main takeaway from inflation expectations is that it has moderated a bit since the start of the Iran conflict. However, consumers are still expecting much higher inflation, both in the short run as well as the long run, than they were back in February. So that's not something that policymakers want to see. If they want to keep inflation expectations under control, keep them well anchored, they don't want to see inflation expectations as high as they are right now. Is there a measure with which you measure consumer, like, happiness? Or let me just give you a personal anecdote here. I had a conversation with somebody the other day, and we were discussing economic growth. And he said, well, GDP is the default measure of output and growth, but it doesn't capture someone's living standards. If somebody is living in an economy that's growing by GDP growth measures, but let's say the life expectancy is dwindling, or the person is just unhappy with work, or they're stuck in a dead-end job, or they don't have any free time, or the environment is polluted, and you're breathing smog every day. There are other measures that may impact somebody's sentiment and consumer well-being besides just maybe inflation in labor markets. Have you looked into this? So our sentiment index, I think, captures that pretty well, because it covers a number of different domains. It's not just, what do you think of the economy? It's based on five questions that are based both on current perceptions, as well as future expectations for personal finances, macroeconomic business conditions, and buying conditions for big-ticket items. And so taken together, I think this is very much an on-the-pulse measure of consumers' views of the economy and their own personal experiences. When you look at personal finances alone, so we have a question about whether your personal finances have gotten better, worse, or the same as relative to a year ago, and then we have an open-ended question on why. And that open-ended question provides a ton of color about what it is that people are feeling about their experiences in the economy. So this idea, like you've mentioned, is about cost of living. Is it about income volatility, job loss, loss of health? What's happening with health insurance? This is a completely open-ended follow-up question. People can say whatever they want. And what we're seeing there is the number one factor is high prices. Some people might say it specifically in terms of gas prices, or about health insurance costs, or gas, or the cost of food. But overall, prices is by far the number one thing that's weighing on people now. OK. Let's go over these five core questions. And I think a lot of people participating in the actual survey itself, maybe watching this right now, I think it might be a good exercise. I don't think I've done this with you. But actually, how you, Joanne, would answer these questions. I'm not, don't, you don't have to give the answer yourself, you know, but just walk us through the criteria with which you would evaluate the answers here. Are you financially better or worse off than a year ago? I think that's pretty clear. But are you just looking at your bank statement here? How would you answer this question? Well, every person is going to answer this in a different way. You know, some people, I think it's unlikely anyone's actually opening up their bank statement, but I don't think they need to. I think if they are feeling financially secure, they don't need to check their most recent balance to know that. And so, you know, what a lot of research has shown is that with these, these kinds of questions, you know, what consumers, what respondents are kind of pulling out of their mind in that moment without thinking too hard about it, is actually a pretty good reflection of their experiences. Will you be better or worse off one year from now? How would you answer that? Well, that again, some people are going to think about, you know, what are the exchanges? What are the changes that I expect in my life over the next year? What are the changes I expect in the economy over the next year? You know, a person who is retired and on a fixed income, they're not really thinking about income volatility at all. They might be thinking about how much are my costs going to go up? If you, if you are a young person just graduating from college, you'll be thinking about where do I think the labor market's going to be for my major in a few months. And if you are a young parent, you know, looking to move into a house, an apartment or a house with more bedrooms, you'll be thinking about what mortgage rates might look like, what the housing market might look like. So the really, the really wonderful thing about this is we're getting a swath of the U.S. population and everyone's going to be bringing in different, different factors, depending on their own situations. And when you average them together from month to month, you'll get a pretty accurate measure of whether Americans as a whole, consumers as a whole are seeing things on the upswing or the downswing. I can offer my interpretation. So a couple of years ago, when I was an employee at a company, I'm looking at whether or not my real earnings, so inflation adjusted salary would go up. So basically, do I still have a job next year? Am I confident I'll get laid off? Probably not. I'm pretty confident that I'll have a job next year. Am I confident I'll get a raise? I don't know. I can't control that. My performance is okay, I guess, but I'm looking at maybe a raise. I got one last year, maybe one next year. Is inflation high? That's the key question that I have to consult economists. Is it going to be high next year? Yeah, maybe. So therefore, it probably works off. Right now, as a business owner, I'm looking at, is the economy going to shrink? Are markets going to tank? Those things determine whether or not there's going to be business next year. Yeah, same person, different circumstances, different factors. Yeah. Will business conditions be good or bad over the next year? Now, that's a difficult question. How would someone who's not a business owner know how to answer that question? They may not be a business... Well, some of them are business owners, but even the ones who aren't, they're interacting with businesses all the time. And they are the customers of businesses. They're patronizing businesses probably every day. And so they're kind of looking at the world around them and saying, how much foot traffic is there at the shopping center? How hard is it for me to find a parking space? How hard is it to get a dinner reservation? Or how long is the drive-through line at McDonald's? You may not be the proprietor of a business, but you're interacting with businesses all the time. Now, this fourth question, will business conditions be good or bad over the next five years? That's interesting. Why did you break it down between one and five years? We really want to get a sense of, if people think things are going to be on the upswing or the downswing, whether that's something that's going to persist in the future, far into the future, or is it a reflection of a short-term shock? So as an example, let's think back to about a year ago when there were a ton of developments with respect to tariff policy. We want to look separately at potential effects in the short run and the long run, because you may imagine in the short run, it might be very difficult for businesses to absorb a brand new policy like this. But you might think, after a couple of years, businesses will adjust, some factories will be reshored, new supply chains will open up. And if you expect something, say, bad in the short run, you may not think that'll be the case in the long run. And in fact, we saw that in a lot of open-ended comments, not just related to tariffs, but also right now related to the war, where people are saying, I expect gas prices to be really bad right now for the next year. But when the war is over, I expect those gas prices to come down. And that's why it's really important to look separately at the short run as well as the long run. Is now a good or bad time to buy major household goods? This becomes an interesting question and problem in itself. Do we have any evidence to suggest that if a lot of people overwhelmingly vote yes and actually do buy household goods now, that's actually a self-fulfilling prophecy for higher inflation? So that is one of the reasons why this question is there. So after we ask you, is it a good or bad time to buy this big ticket purchase, we then ask why. And one of those open-ended responses categories that we've been looking at, and again, this is completely open-ended. We're just kind of classifying them after we receive them from our respondents. We're tracking a share of respondents who say, now is a good time to buy because prices aren't coming down in the future. Or we think prices are going to go up in the future. So you better buy that dishwasher now before it gets more expensive. And that is an example of inflationary psychology because enough people do that. They pull their purchases to the present. That would put upward pressure on inflation, just as you mentioned. So going back to tariffs again, right after the presidential election, many consumers were anticipating that tariffs were going to hit as soon as a new presidential administration was in place in January. So in November and December, we had a surge of consumers reporting inflationary psychology with respect to these big ticket purchases. Buy that car now, buy that appliance now before tariffs kick in and prices get even higher in the future. And indeed, when you look at 2024, Q4 durable spending, auto spending, there was a surge in that spending as well. So that's a very recent example of people acting on their beliefs. And when you actually look at this measure of inflationary psychology going back to the 60s, because yes, we do have data going back that far. When there's a sustained surge in these buy and advance motives, inflation tends to get higher thereafter. It's actually a very strong leading indicator for a higher inflation. In the case of this recent 2024 situation, those buy and advance motives, they plunged as soon as the presidential transition was complete. By the beginning of 2025, people felt that it was pretty much too late to avoid those price increases. And indeed, we did not see a sustaining of that surge of big ticket purchasing into the new year. Okay, so then going back to the overall sentiment index itself. So as you can see, the overall trajectory has been down over the last couple of years. Now, of the five core questions that we talked about, did we see a decline across the board, across all five, or were there particular areas that suffered the most? Personal finances has been one that's been tracking this most strongly and leading this most strongly. And I think this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise, particularly in the downward trend that we saw leading into 2022 and also in 2025 and 26, because consumers, those were the periods where inflation was trending up. And as I mentioned, inflation, high prices, that's the number one factor on consumers' minds right now with the living standards. That being said, there's been a tremendous amount of correlation between those five. Business conditions, as well as personal finances have more or less been moving together during this period, but that's not always the case. I'm curious, and I'll bring up a few other stats for you, but I'm curious, does the survey ask the respondent for their household income or net wealth? Yes. So we ask people what their household income is. We don't quite have a net wealth measure. One of the things that I learned working at the Federal Reserve for so many years is that to collect an accurate wealth number requires probably one hour of interviewing by itself. But we do get, I think, a pretty decent proxy. We ask people if they own risky assets like stocks, and then we ask them the size of their portfolio. So that's, I think, a little bit easier to answer than giving us everything on their balance sheet. And if they're a homeowner, we get their gross real estate wealth. We ask them for the value of their home, but we don't collect, we don't ask people to bring out their mortgage statements. So we don't know what their net real estate wealth is. That being said, if we're trying to classify respondent into high wealth or low wealth, the size of the stock holdings and the size of your house is a pretty, especially the stock holdings is a pretty decent measure. And that's something I've been watching very closely. I was going to say, because if you look at this chart here, for example, this is the distribution of household wealth in the US by income distribution. So as you can see, the wealthiest, well, it breaks it down by 0.1%. And then 1%, and then 10%. But the wealthiest 10%, you can see that their wealth measures have changed broadly in line with the growth of the stock market, whereas the bottom 50% has less of a correlation. So just overlay this mentally with this chart here, which is the S&P 500. You can see that it's gone down in 2022, climbed up at the exact same time the stock market was recovered. Peaks and troughs have more or less coincided with peaks and troughs, local peaks and troughs of the S&P 500. That is not applicable to the Consumer Sentiment Index. I don't see a correlation at all. I find that surprising. Do you? I don't think it should be that surprising because most people don't have very large portfolios. So if you look at the highest wealth consumers in the survey, they feel much better about the economy than people who don't own stock or have very low levels of stock. And so with the record high that we've been seeing in stock markets over the last couple of years, we see that supporting high wealth consumers, whereas low wealth consumers, they have not moved whatsoever. And why should they? They don't own any stock. They don't feel like they're personally benefiting from the rising stock market. And they're forming their views of the economy in a different way. The other thing to note is that there are people who have very large stock portfolios whose personal finances are being boosted by these stock markets. But even so, when we ask them about the macroeconomy or what factors are driving their views, they're giving factors that might be less correlated with the stock market. So they talk about my portfolio is doing great, but I'm worried this won't last. And so I think that the factors that are driving stock market performance aren't necessarily the same factors that are driving consumer confidence. Yeah. I wonder if we can use this as evidence that the stock market isn't reflective of the overall economy. That, by the way, is a big academic debate. It's a debate on media on my show as well. Some people argue it's a leading indicator. Some people say there's absolutely no relationship. But if we're looking at this and saying objectively, yeah, the stock market moves in one way and consumer sentiment moves in another way. Clearly, like you said, people don't own large stock holdings. My question is, if the stock market has an impact, let's say, on economic growth, which is to say if companies' earnings do well, you can start to say financial conditions will trickle down to the masses. That isn't reflected in the data. What would you respond to that? One thing I would note is that when we're looking at stock market indices, different indices include different types of firms. And one of the key things that we've seen over the last couple of years is that so much of the growth is being driven by a very small number of firms. And there seems to be consensus that this is being driven by anticipated benefits coming out of AI investments. So there are a lot of aspects of the economy that aren't really related to this. And maybe on a dollar basis, that may not seem that big relative to the size of these Magnificent Seven or other AI-facing firms, but they're just as important for consumer experiences and the macro economy. And I think that's only being amplified as AI-related stocks are increasing in value and they're getting weighted more over time. So I think that insofar that all parts of the economy are going to be correlated with these few firms, yes, then you're going to see a correlation. But when there's more of separation and how different parts of the economy are doing, you're going to see less correlation. And just imagine what's going on in the Middle East right now with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Some industries are exposed to that more. Some are exposed less. Some are exposed more to oil prices and some are not. So it's not going to move all together at the same time. And when we're looking at aggregate performance in the stock market, depends on those weights. Yeah. And here I'm just, as an exercise, I've plotted the inflation rate versus the sentiment index of the consumer sentiment index from the University of Michigan here. Again, not very close, but roughly inverse relationship. I know these colors are both blue, but one is inflation. This one's inflation. And then the sentiment index is the other. Roughly, I mean, it's probably too simplistic to say that it's just inversely correlated to inflation. But if you're looking at this chart, how would you interpret this? Right now, we're seeing in multiple parts of the survey, inflation prices, number one factor for consumers, cost of living, number one factor. So in this post-pandemic period, that's pretty much it. It's things, I mean, people are responding to changes in the cost of living. People are responding to changes in their purchasing power. This isn't always the case, right? We had 40 years, close to 40 years of much more moderate inflation. And in that period, particularly in that 10-year period between the Great Recession and the pandemic, no one was thinking about inflation. Barely anyone was mentioning anything about cost of living. I mean, when they talked about cost of living, it was with respect to their income, the numerator, less so about the denominator. Because inflation was so stable in the 2010s, it just wasn't really a factor. And we're just in a different world now. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, that's a different paradigm. Is it almost as bad as the 1980s, the early 80s, you think? So the thing with the 80s is that we have to remember that the 80s inflation was the fourth, fifth, or sixth episode of inflation that we had seen in the preceding 15, 20 years. So inflation, there was one episode, an episode in the 60s, multiple episodes in the 70s, and consumers have pretty much gotten used to this idea that inflation goes up, it'll come back down, and it's going to come roaring back again within a year or so. People really got used to that. And that was the reason why it was so painful to drive inflation down with the Volcker disinflation in the 80s. So we're in, I mean, what we all worry about is, are we in that situation again? We're kind of in inflationary episode number two. So the first one was 20, that peaked in 2022. But in the two years after that, inflation was slowly coming down. And then by the end of 2024, we were still above target, but we were a lot lower than we were in 2022. And then last year and this year, it's picking up again. And so are we on our way to a 1980s style situation in the next five to 10 years? I sure hope not. But that is one of the big worries. So I guess that answers my next question, which is what consumers need to feel more confident. So they need more price stability. What would need to happen to convince the consumers in this survey that we have a return to price stability and that maybe lower inflation by a few months isn't just a temporary measure? We need to see sustained reductions and slow down in inflation. Now consumers tell us they want deflation and any economist knows when that happens, that's something that really bad is happening in the economy. I don't think that's necessary to. People say they want deflation, but they don't actually want deflation in real life because of all the other things that come with deflation. But they definitely want to see disinflation. And we just haven't seen sustained disinflation in quite some time at this point. One or two months of disinflation really is not enough. It needs to continue going on that downward softening trajectory for consumers to feel better about things. Just side note, and we'll close off soon, Joanne. What is your personal sentiment on the Federal Reserve's policy? Should we have a zero percent inflation target? I mean, why even target two percent if the goal here is to make consumers happy? Well, the goal actually is to deliver price stability as well as maximum employment. And that's Congress, that's mandated by Congress. And so it's a challenge for the central bank, any central bank to have to balance a dual mandate. A two percent target is actually relatively recent. It wasn't always specified what that target was. And then also, it wasn't always the case that the Fed viewed deviations above two the same way as symmetrically with deviations below two. So I leave it to the policymakers to define that dual mandate. But when it comes to consumer well-being, I think that dual mandate, if you can achieve it, is something that delivers that. When there is solid employment and people feel confident about their incomes, if they feel like they can plan and understand where price, slow and steady inflation and for price stability, it makes it easier for them to make economic decisions and it's easier for them to feel like they're thriving in the economy. And right now, they just don't feel like they're thriving in the economy. All right. I'll just leave this on the screen. Final question. What, based on available data and the research and the news that you're seeing right now, how confident are you that the consumer sentiment index is on an uptrend, sustained uptrend back towards maybe pre-pandemic levels? We need to see some resolution with a straight or four moves before I can express any confidence that we are on a sustained uptrend trajectory. If the straight or four moves may sometimes be open, sometimes be closed, and the reason for that is because that affects energy prices and we need this. And if energy prices are continuing to bounce up and down at an elevated level, that's going to pass through to gas prices and it has a risk to pass through to prices of other goods as well. And so we need to see some stability there. We need to see some stability with energy prices and gas prices before I can feel like we're on steady footing in terms of an upper trajectory for sentiment. Excellent. Well, absolutely. Thank you very much, Joanne. Appreciate your thoughts. Where can you go to follow your work? You can go to our website, www.sea.isr.umich.edu. We put out data approximately every two weeks and you can get a lot of our reports right there. Okay, we'll put the links down there. And yeah, if you're in the U.S., please do participate in the survey. I think it's a very useful tool for everybody in the investment community and policymakers alike. It's probably one of the most followed consumer sentiment indexes in the world. So thank you very much, Joanne, for your continued updates. We appreciate your time. Take care. Thank you so much. Thank you. Please do follow Joanne and the University of Michigan in links down below.