Consumers Keep Their Spirits High
In this morning's Personal Income and Outlays report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the headline data show that personal income advanced 0.4% in March from the month before -- better than the 0.3% in both January and February. And after subtracting inflation and taxes, real disposable income edged up 0.2% in March, which was, again, better than the 0.1% drop in real disposable incomes in each of the first two months of the quarter.
Meanwhile, personal spending advanced 0.3%, and by 0.1% in real terms. Since spending growth was less then income growth, the savings rate advanced by 0.1 percentage point to 3.8%. In an ideal world, we'd like to see incomes grow fast enough that spending can grow while the savings rate can still increase to levels that would allow households to reduce debt and build retirement savings portfolios....708 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.
There’s no substitute for a trading floor to get great ideas, so Jim Cramer created a better one at Real Money and blogs there exclusively. We then added legendary hedge fund manager, Doug Kass, with his exclusive Daily Diary and best investing ideas. Staffed with more than 4 dozen investing pros, money managers, journalists and analysts, Real Money Pro gives you a flood of opinions, analysis and actionable trading advice found nowhere else, and allows you to interact directly with each expert.
Already a Subscriber? Please login.
