Consumer Confidence: A First Real Dent in the Armor?

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, May 28. The Bottom Line segment of today’s podcast starts at (2:57) for listeners who want to skip ahead.

State of Play

Stocks advanced on Friday led by tech. The long weekend was quiet in terms of new news. As we look at our board of indicators at 0630, things are predictably pretty quiet (outside of commoditiesland at least):

• These are advancing, with WTI crude oil up 1.5% to trade close to $79/barrel. Copper is up 1.2%. Precious metals are rallying led by silver, which is up 4%. Gold is up 0.5%. Soft commodities wheat, coffee, sugar, all up over 1%;

• Stock index futures are pointing to gains led by tech. The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ 0.00%↑) is up 0.5% with S&P 500 (SPY 0.00%↑) up about 0.3%;

• Bonds are unchanged. The 2-year yield is 4.93% whilst the 10-year yields 4.46%;

• Cryptos are unchanged with Bitcoin changing hands around $68,700.

Today’s Known Events

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence reading for May is out at 1000. The expectation is for a reading of 96.1, down a bit from the 97.0 recorded last month. That would be lower than at any point since July 2022.