Consumer Confidence Hits COVID Era Lows, Addressing Anthropic’s “Risk to Humanity”

we are firming up right now on the dollar at 101 up to So that's the state of play. Let's get out to Katie who joins me now, because we've bee waiting for some of this data to hit the tape. Kin, we've got September conference board consumer confidence. We're watching t sentiment indicators very closely because of what happened in these markets off the back of Umesh's survey. What are you seeing this morning. We are seeing actually a pretty dramatic drop to the downside for consumer conference fro Conference Board, as you talked about, this is the September reading, and that actually came in at 81.9. The street was looking for 89.2. And we did get a revision for last month, dropping down to 88.6. That' from 89.4. So we areing a drop. Thee is still updating, so we haven't gotten Actually, the Consumerer Expectations Index did fall by 5.9 points. So we do have some of the data right now. This is one of the larger drops that we've seen in a very long time. And in fact, if you look at consumer confidence, we are actually pretty much testing and actually exceeded the Covid 19 lows when it comes to consumer confidence. So this is actually a pretty big deal here, Sam, as we do get this data rolling in present situation index, that also is rolling over to the downside. Not as bad as we have seen i 2022 or 2020, but once again, kind of moving ae bit lower here. lot os to the economy. We have net views on current business conditions. They say tre stayin versus bad. That actually declined by 3.4%. So yotarting to get a little bit of a change when it comes to current business conditions as well. Current employment conditions also softened within the month as well. So we are seeing some weakness when it comes to consumer. This kind of matches the consumer sentimta that we have seen over the last week, as well as the University of Michigan sentiment data set that we have seen as well. So you actually think that would a little bit higher on the back this news, becauslly lower consumer confidence or even consumer sentiment for thatter, kind of front runs consumer spending, which is also an input when it co inflatut the market's kind of still digesting a lot of this data. Yeah for sure. Okay. So we've deteriorated notably in September, accor to the chiefmist over at the Conference Board. So obviously we're seeing the present situation index falling sharply. I mean just walk us through tket reaction. Iow you'e minute tick chart on the VIX has been pretty interesting to some of the other sentiment indicators I'm also just wondering what you make of the divergence. We're sta to see between the resilience in this economy and how consumers are feeling a everything. Well we know that this is a k-sh economy. So when we have the sentiment data set, you're kind of getting a broader swa of the thoset participate, but those that actually have dollars, like the enterprises and some wealthier individuals out here, they're still very resilient and they continue to spend in certain pockets of the market. And then their investment, esly when you're looking at equ continues to provide them with positive cash flow, will, because equities obviously are still trading near all highs. So this kind of that k-shaped economy. I'm looking at volatility only because volatility is still relatively low. We're only sitting at a 16 VIX right now. We're implying about a 1% move. When you're looking at credit spr themselves. They ce to move to the upside here. And that's where I'm finding the major diverthat usually doesn't last this long. One day two days threeays. Okay. You ca a divergence. We are pretty much sitting at a about a week and a half or so where yield markets, credit spreads moving higher, higher volatility in those in th markets, equity vol relatively low. And o again, looking at this data set, you would think that the market would kind of pump this up here a little bit as well. Just given the fact that once again, consumer is really tied to thespending inflationary picture as well, en interesting reaction or non-reaction from the equity , at least for now. also have some of that Jolts data coming out too. That may add a littleit of fuel to this fire as well. Yeah. Just walk us through the numbers that we are seeing right now, because obviously just keeping in mind that the jolts in a week where we get a lot of other jobs data is a laggern terms of, you know, the month ir just walk us through the numbers. Okay, so we seeing Jolts or job openings for August coming in at 7.079 million. She was looking for 7.23 mil So we did come up a little bit light. We did get a positive revision for lastnth7 million up to 7illion. So let's say that this data set kind of offsets each And yes, it is ae bit delayed. It's a little bit stale. And you woul wouldn't be sud if you actually see an uptick in jolts here over the next cou months as the market kind of prepares for the holiday season. So a lot of the retail retail companies are going to hire seasonal workers. They'll have those job ope out there. Construction jobs usually kind of have a little bit of an uptick at the latter half of the year to get projects done. And then we have some of the residual for back to school. So let's say lower than the Street's expectations. But thasion for theor month for July kind of offsets the, the, the lower print for today as well. So all in all, kind of given the dyn it's not that great of data for today. You're stiling kind of a lter response when it comes to the equities. I actually looking for in order to kind of give a little bit of softness when it comes to this yield sp that we've seen over the last month and a half. Yeah. Or perhaps a lot of it had been already priced in with some of the sentiment indicators we got last week. Let's just switch gears to this anthropic news. I mean, this leaked IPO prospectus to Reuters. I mean, obviously there's financials. It'sying nt they've seen, the company is reporting a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. Planning to spend $518 billion on obligations over the next few years. But the part that gets me cagey. And the part that made me spit out my c this morning when I read this headline, was that it plans to caution potential investors in IPO that AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. This is the same c seeking to profit from that technology. mean, I don't know if you can sort of connect the dots here. It's it seemsrming. It seems pretty absurd at this point when the market is trying to arm wrestle with these narratives in the market you know, the growing AI anxieties and just what to do about it. I mean,'s d around. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I would agree with y I mean, it k of reminds me of like Y2K every time that we talk about this situation here,, but it also could be a great technology and great u for improving efficiency here. So you are right, we are seeing this leaked IPO prospectus here. Around 80 of the 261 pages actually is talking about AI risk, compared to only 48 pages of the business itself. So I think that's actually very notable. You talout the exial risk to humanity, especially when it comes to self-improving m as well as resisting shutdowns, concealing information, and even resembling some form of blackmail for its users. So that's very unique. But y right, they have been able to obviously provide really cutting models, and they are trying to profit off of that. They're look around a $2 trill market cap when they do IPO her this is going to be a battle Sam. I think some of this is probabl public relations wanting to make sure that they are being heard. Especially if you're trying to build out data centers and some of these communities that are concerned about not only the resources utilized in that community, but also the potential risk that they're probably tr to do that a little bit, and also probably trying to cover themselves legally in the event that somethings occur. I mean, if you kind of look at some of these instances that an anthropic or even an open AI has kind of listed over the last couple of weeks, some of them, if they were, if they will, legally, they probably would be going to court or going to jail. So I think e's a f murkiness when it comes to the legali AI, and they're ably tryif that. But we'll see how this actually does perform. We're still expecting this to actually hit the market in November. And let's see if the hype is going to be able to have some follow through here. Or is there going to be enough caution in this market where maybe the IPO is not going to be as successful as people thought previously? Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy. I mean, what is being reported here as far as what they are warning about given of course,his could potentially behe biggest IPO in