Markets are impatient, and that is particularly the case today. Confidence has collapsed in the wake of the Liberation Day shock, dragging down soft survey-based data, as illustrated by the purple line in the chart. But that “confidence recession” has yet to manifest in the hard economic data. Garrett Melson, Portfolio Strategist, Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, points out this shock is not the sudden-stop variety investors remember from Covid. “While some impacts are likely to be felt more rapidly, namely reduced capex spending and slower hiring, even those have yet to show through in the hard data as activity has been pulled forward by businesses rushing to front-run tariffs,” says Garrett Melson.
May 28, 2025