Three Views of the Consumer

Over the weekend… doing what Financial Nerds do, after actually looking for an earnings update from Factset, but only being about 40% through the earnings season and after reviewing an almost 100 page slide deck from JPMorgan, the following consumer related charts jumped out, so we decided to share

Recall that the consumer makes up over two thirds of the US GPD/Economy/Economic Growth via his/her spending… one can infer a happy consumer is a spending consumer…

These are averages across the country, so there are certainly different individual cases, but this is definitely worth a look…

Here is the Consumer latest Balance Sheet

Liabilities are most interesting to us, especially the non-mortgage liabilities…

Consumer Debt Service is at a very low and serviceable level

The Great Recession of 07-09 has had at least the one good long term effect of keeping the consumer debt service low… not sure if fear or regulation, but still low compared to this multi-decade Chart…

Worth noting this chart variance in NOT very large… very interesting ..

Consumer Net Worth

Appreciation of most financial assets post Great Recession 07-09 has cleared new higher ground for the consumer, adding to confidence, happiness and freedom of spending…

Ignore the value the numbers are too big to comprehend, just take note of the higher high in the far right…

These numbers being so interesting, likely have spawned a deeper dive in our next Newsletter with additional facts and national averages that may make for a great New Years Resolution Article…

Three Views of the Consumer – Balance Sheet, Net Worth, Debt Service … Looking Good!