Consumer Sentiment Declined in Early February, Amazon Go for groceries, President Trump will have announcement on taxes in few weeks

February 10, 2017

After hitting a 10-year high in January, Consumer Sentiment declined in early February, which was centered around the expectations index. However, confidence remains quite favorable, with only five higher readings in the past decade. The preliminary February University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 95.7 from the final reading of 98.5 in January and below the 97.9 expected.

A new approach to grocery shopping is taking place at on line retailer Amazon. Amazon is getting into the brick-and-mortar supermarket space, but things will be a bit different from your local grocer. A test store opened on December 5 in Seattle where customers walk in and grab groceries from the shelves and walk out without going to the checkout lines. When to customer walks in, they would go through a turnstile and tap their cell phones, which logs them into the store’s network and connects to their Amazon account through an app. The new store is called Amazon Go and there are just a few employees at the store. Once the customer leaves the store, items purchased are charged to their Amazon account.

President Trump said on Thursday that within a few weeks, a big league announcement will come “that will be phenomenal in terms of taxes.” Those words touched off a rally in Stocks that pushed the Dow (20,172), Nasdaq (5,715) and the S&P (2,307) to record highs at the close of trading. It remains to be seen how much tax reform will be seen as there are opponents to deep cuts on both sides of the aisle.