Telegraph - UK consumer confidence rises sharply

Blacklight

UK consumer confidence bounced back sharply in August despite the austerity onslaught and rising fears of a double-dip recession, confounding those who tried hard to talk down the market recently into self-feeding downward spiral.

A substantial chunk of the country thinks the overall economic situation will improve over the next year.

Blistering economic growth of almost 1.2pc in the second quarter – the hottest in nine years – has revived optimism

Telegraph

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Mr Moon cautioned against reading too much into a single month's data and said the index remains very low by historical standards. "This gain merely reverses a large drop in July.

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I like big letter sometimes........

mystic_trev

I'm not sure about this? What I'm seeing is a lot of people buying 'stuff' because Interest rates are so low, so they might as well spend it as having it in the Bank. Also, with VAT going up to 20% people are buying large value items to avoid the increase.

Blacklight

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

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I like big letter sometimes........

What are you trying to imply?

House price rises over the course of the last two years have reversed those seen in 2007.

The largest economic growth seen in nine years reversed the negative growth seen during the recession.

I'm not sure what your point is.

Davesnave

mystic_trev wrote: »

I'm not sure about this? What I'm seeing is a lot of people buying 'stuff' because Interest rates are so low, so they might as well spend it as having it in the Bank. Also, with VAT going up to 20% people are buying large value items to avoid the increase.

Spot on. For those who have the cash, there's no better time on the horizon to buy things you'll need anyway.

Materials prices keep rising, so my 'stuff' for next year has been bought and is sitting in the yard now. It wasn't 'confidence' that made me do this, just the above, plus pants interest on the most liquid funds.

Edit: Come to think of it, it was 'confidence.' The confidence that it would all cost me a lot more next year!

Radiantsoul

I guess a lot of people who haven't lost their jobs over the last few years now feel they might not lose their job at all. Also people are probably only able to suspend their purchases of certain items for so long, so I suspect purchases of white goods, cars and so on will increase.

julieq

There will be a lot of big ticket spending Q4 to avoid the VAT hike. Expect a very flat start to next year.

michaels

It will be the same hike as at the start of this year when we did indeed see a flat start - but more I suspect due to being snowed in than because things cost 2.5% more.

julieq wrote: »

There will be a lot of big ticket spending Q4 to avoid the VAT hike. Expect a very flat start to next year.

julieq

The difference now is that the underlying economy is stalling where there was good reason for optimism this time last year. I'm expecting a shallow second dip triggered largely by continuing bad news in the US. It's not going to be catastrophic, but it'll be a long slow trudge uphill for 12-18 months.

Chris2685

You really think anyone outside of this forum is going to consider that VAT could go up soon, so they should start spending thousands on goods? What a load of rubbish. I expect very few people are even thinking about that.

Radiantsoul

I can't see the VAT increasing bring much spending forwards, but it will clearly depress the economy next year as about 1% of consumer purchasing power will be sucked out of the economy.