Figure 1: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment (blue, left scale), Conference Board Consumer Confidence (tan, left scale), both demeaned and normalized by standard deviation (for the displayed sample period); and Shapiro, Sudhof and Wilson (2020) Daily News Sentiment Index (black, right scale). The News Index observation for September is through 9/8/2024. Michigan sentiment for September is preliminary. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: U.Mich via FRED, Conference Board via Investing.com, SF Fed, NBER, and author’s calculations.
Figure 1: Year-on-year actual CPI inflation (bold black), and expected inflation from University of Michigan (red), NY Fed (light green), Survey of Professional Forecasters (blue +), Coibion-Gorodnichenko SoFIE mean (sky blue squares), Cleveland Fed (pink), all in %. Michigan inflation expectations for September is preliminary.Source: BLS, U.Michigan via FRED, NY Fed, Philadelphia Fed, Atlanta Fed, Cleveland Fed, and author’s calculations.
This might be good news for Harris-Walz. Which of course means Trump-Vance will stir even more racial trouble.
All the gain in the consumer sentiment and economic conditions indices in September (so far) was among Democrats. All thr improvement in expectations, on the other hand, was among independents. Kamala’s debate performance may at work here.
https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/
Trump has figured out that the end of the lock-up in Trump Media shares is hurting share value. He said today that he isn’t going to sell, and Trump Media shares jumped.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-is-not-selling-his-shares-truth-social-company-2024-09-13/
If he lied, he may have violated securities law. Neither Trump’s statement or the possibility that a lie would violate the law should be seen as evidence that Trump won sell shares. He may, however, think that his upside from holding shares, in case he wins the election, is reason not to sell.
“If he lied, he may have violated securities law.”
Could this be the good old pump and dumb. Tell the suckers he is not going to sell to get the stock price up so when he does sell, he will make more.
An insider like Trump is required to file an SEC Form 4 within two days of the transaction informing the public of the buy or sell, number of shares and share price.
Trump holds 115 million shares, about 60% of the total. The average number of shares traded daily is only about 6 million. If Trump were to attempt to sell even 1% of his shares, traders would sniff it out in minutes leading to a price death spiral.
However, other family members holding smaller stakes might be able to cash out without too much attention. Pay attention to the trading volume around September 20.
Sabato on presidential polling error:
https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/polling-error-in-2016-2020-look-out-for-wisconsin/
Larry Sabato identifies Wisconsin as the state where polling error was greatest – where the Democratic presidential candidate underperformed pre-election polls most – in 2016 and 2020. He also argues that polling bias is probably smaller this year.
Pollsters recalibrate after every election, so it makes sense they’d try to erase the Democratic bias seenin 2016 and 2020. The problem is, calibration is not reliable when the population is changing and sampling is infrequent.
This is horse-race stuff, of course, but what else are we gonna do?
Speaking of which, Kamala’s post-debate bounce at PredictIt is holding up, and the 538 polling average widened in Kamala’s favor today. Fingers crossed, Moses.
Copy that last part.
Maybe I’m underselling the brains of rural folks. I went to this re-opening of a 1950s burger joint in an ALMOST surburban (but more disconnected really) area in the far west part of my city, and these two older Black ladies got me on track to find the place, they had a pretty solid local newspaper, and the grocers where I stopped to ask directions had terrific prices. BLT and corndog in the reopened burger joint was great. Register girl was a hottie (that last part has nothing to with with intelligence of rural voters, does it??). But seriously hope I’m wrong on the wide error margin lost in non-polling of rurals, but I tend to doubt it.
I’m kinda stupid on this stuff sometimes, and I’m wondering if redistricting in Wisconsin doesn’t just help local races, but might also help Presidential results.