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December 28, 2010 at 10:27 AM
It was a mixed bag of consumer confidence news Tuesday to round out 2010.
The State Street Investor Confidence Index rose 8 points from 96.4 to 104.4 in December 2010, State Street Global Markets reported Tuesday.
Investors were more confident in North America and Asia, where the index rose 7.7 points and 7.4 points respectively. In Europe, the Index fell 10.8 points to 99.
“The strong decline of European investors’ confidence shows that the regions’ investors remain quite jittery in the face of intra-European turmoil,” Paul O’Connell of State Street Associates, and one of the developers of the Index, said in a press release. “We went quickly from a regime of concern around the euro and the liquidity of some of the smaller countries’ debts, to a regime where those concerns were ignored. And now we have come full circle: European investors are back again worrying that high sovereign indebtedness may prove destabilizing for the region.”
The Index measures institutional investors buying and selling patterns to determine confidence levels. An Index level of 100 shows investors are "neutral," and are not increasing or decreasing their allocations to risky assets.
The Conference Board, however, found consumers were less confident in December. Results from the Consumer Confidence Index, released Tuesday, found that after gaining slightly in November, investors' confidence was down slightly in December, dropping to 52.5 from 54.3 last month.
The Index found investors were more pessimistic about their present-day conditions in December than they were in November. The Present Situation Index fell to 23.5 from 25.4. Just 7.5% of consumers say business is "good," and 41.2% of consumers say business is actually "bad." Over 46% say jobs are difficult to come by.
