Two retail sentiment indicators just refreshed for the first time since the war began. The surprise: retail didn’t get more defensive.
You’d expect a shock like this to show up immediately in household behaviour — more cash, less optimism.
So far, that’s not what the monthly data says:
- AAII cash allocations (monthly): bounced off the historical “sell-zone” threshold of 14%. But at 15%, cash is still very low. The bigger surprise isn’t the bounce — it’s that cash didn’t rise more.
- Conference Board stock market expectations: dipped from 53.6% to 48% of US consumers expecting stocks to rise — still well above the long-term average. Again, the surprise is how little it fell.