The Time Varying Relation Between Consumer Confidence and Equities

Abstract

We examine the impact of changes in consumer confidence measures on future stock index returns. Our analysis is built on the growing understanding that investor sentiment is an important factor in the stock market. By using frequency dependent regression methods, we show that there is a time-varying relation between consumer confidence and stock returns. Higher levels of consumer confidence imply greater returns in the short term but negative returns in the medium term. However, this effect is only observed for the small firm index. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that consumer confidence is significantly affected by stock returns in reverse causality.