The New York Fed surveyed households about their finances. Households said they're more worried now than at any point since July 2022. July 2022 becomes the reference point. Not the Great Depression. Not 2008. July 2022.
Twenty-nine months ago is apparently when we established the benchmark for financial anxiety. Someone at the Fed decided that seventeen months of data makes for statistically relevant historical context. They didn't compare it to March 2020. They didn't reach back to 2009. They picked a random summer month from less than three years ago because nothing says "we're taking the long view" like comparing today to the summer Trump was still posting on Truth Social about the 2020 election.
The survey showed inflation expectations remained mostly unchanged. Perceptions of general conditions deteriorated. Two separate measurements. Both pointless. The first one stayed flat while households grew more worried anyway. This creates a fascinating paradox where people think prices will stay the same but also everything is worse. The Fed recorded this discrepancy, published it, and expected us to extract meaning from it.
Here's what actually happened. The Fed called some households. Asked how they felt. Wrote down the feelings. Compared those feelings to feelings from July 2022 specifically. Found that current feelings exceed July 2022 feelings in negativity. Released this as actionable intelligence.
None of this changes a single chart pattern. Not one trendline cares about household sentiment surveys. The New York Fed could survey households every hour and discover anxiety levels not seen since the previous hour. Traders would still ignore it and buy whatever Jim Cramer told them to buy six months ago.
The households will continue worrying. The Fed will continue surveying. We'll get another headline in three months comparing anxiety levels to October 2024. The date will keep moving forward while the households keep feeling backward, and the only thing anyone will remember is that July 2022 was apparently worth remembering.
Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash
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