Westpac Consumer Confidence Index

Categories: Econ, Metrics

The Westpac Consumer Confidence Index measures...yes, you guessed it, consumer confidence. Plot twist: It was founded in Australia (not everything’s about Americans, mate).

The index measures economic expectations by average households using multiple indices to look at everything from consumer views on buying, taxation, investment, and employment.

The group that crunches the numbers on this index, the Westpac Group, is kept busy crunching other things too, such as Australian interest rate expectations, GDP, retail sales, and more. The world follows this index, as Aussies are loved by all and have such nice weather. And then there's that white dome thing by the water. It's kind of a citizens-of-the-world place to go, hence a decent proxy for gauging consumer confidence in the world.

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Finance: What is the Barrons Confidence ...14 Views

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Finance a la shmoop...what is the baron's confidence index

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well Barron's is an old-tiny publisher of Wall Street data and today it's a

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stodgy magazine catering to sophisticated financial readers well the [Magazine of barron's confidence index]

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magazine has fiercely opinionated readers and it began to take advantage

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of them first with simple old-school polls managed by its journalists before

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computers were really a thing and then it began to codify an index the densely

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packed brain power that it was surveying as to where the markets and the world

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was heading so one outcome of this outbound research effort was the bond [Bond index equalling Barron's confidence index]

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index or Baron's confidence index which is calculated by dividing the average

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yield to maturity on what is generally double-a and triple-a grade bonds by the

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average yield to maturity on what is generally double B ish grade bonds got

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it? So triple A double A over the triple B'ers.. Well why would

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you do this strange calculation in the first place

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well it reflects its audience's attitude about credit risk the presumption among

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pretty much everyone is that the safe bet ie US government paper is just a [100 dollar bill stamped safe]

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reflection of inflation more or less and everything else or at least all other

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credit is pegged to that very safe US paper so it sets the standard against

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which the riskier credit is measured it's stable since the Barron's index is

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a bond risk index it is in essence a calculation of its audience's confidence

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in the US economy relative to everything else generally speaking in a good or

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growing economy there are very few bankruptcies or defaults why well partly

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just because times are good and people are buying you know stuff [People walking in a shopping mall]

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yeah even stuff like that and if a given company individually stumbles well there

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are often competitors who are doing well and who would likely acquire that

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company maybe not for a huge premium but at least they'd pay off the company's

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debt so it would be money good right for those triple B's so it's bonds even if

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lowly rated would go back to par and everyone would get paid off as planned [company and competitor smiling]

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so the index isn't an absolute measure of anything really it has to be viewed

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relative to wherever it was trading last week

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last month last year when investors are confident the spreads for bond yields

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are narrower and the ratio is higher.. well think about the intermediate

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bond yields but when the ratio is high and increasing it means that faith and [Bond yield graph appears]

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the economy is growing right because that denominator yield shrinks because

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grade triple B's instead of having to yield 12 percent yield like ten or eight

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and inversely the ratio is lower and decreasing demonstrating less faith in

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the economy when things go the other way and when the economy is really in the

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toilet well expect to hear a lot of this sound [Tumbleweed flies past a man in a clothing store]

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