Consumer Confidence just beats

Here's the 9:55 Consumer Confidence which had nothing to do with the EUR/USD move as that started nearly 30 minutes earlier, unless the report was leaked, but why a drop in the Euro on a beat (I'm not saying it was leaked or is connected)? As always, the devil is in the details.

Released On 8/17/2012 9:55:00 AM For Aug, 2012

Prior Consensus Consensus Range Actual Sentiment Index - Level 72.3  72.0  71.0  to 75.5  73.6

So we have a modest beat on the headline print... Lets see how the on their knees,  QE-rain dancing crowd took the report.

 This is the initial knee jerk reaction in GLD on the release of the report -remember for the QE crowd and gold as a QE sentiment indicator, bad news is good and good news is bad, this was good news hence the knee jerk reaction to the downside on some volume. However, GLD is a little range bound since, why? Again, the headline print is used by retail, they rarely look deeper, but it is often the sub-indicies of these reports that show the devil in the details.

First the headline print is only a modest beat and it is coming off the worst levels of the year. In the sub-components, Consumer Outlook for the economy saw a massive drop to an 11 month low, consumers are not optimistic about the economy which translates to Consumer Spending and from there to all other parts of the economy, the shift was also a very sudden and deep shift. In addition, Inflation Expectations hit 17 month highs for the report, put the two together and it sounds like consumers will be tightening their belts and buckling down.

Food price inflation is in the news right now even though it has yet to hit the supermarkets based on Wednesday's CPI report, but consumers are obviously not filled with the Hope of nearly 4 years ago (that's not a political statement, just an observation of fact).