Consumer confidence improves in September, new home sales gain in August

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss September consumer confidence report data and August new home sales.

Video transcript

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BRIAN SOZZI: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. I'm Brian Sozzi, alongside Julie Hyman and Brad Smith. Investors are getting a little reprieve from the rapid selling that has descended on markets this month, notably a sloppy close on Monday. You're seeing all three major indices in the green at this point. But Julie, over to you. Some breaking news on the consumer confidence front.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, let's start with confidence here, coming in better than estimated for September from the Conference Board at 108. The estimate was only 104.6. So maybe investors getting a little bit of actual good news today, not just this snapback that we're seeing in stocks. The present situation index going to 149.6. Expectations still relatively depressed at 80.3. But an improvement month over month in all of the measures that we look at for consumer confidence. Really interesting there.

Then we're looking at new home sales, which are a bit more trailing here. There, we're looking at the August number. And there, we saw also an unexpected gain to 685,000 on an annual pace. That's a gain of 28.8% on a month over month basis. So really interesting here to have these two economic data points coming in better than estimated. Now, of course, new home sales, the new home part of the market is the much smaller part of the market, existing homes a much bigger part. But nonetheless, interesting to see a little bit more positive news on that front as we get that consumer confidence as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: You want to embrace some positives after the tough months for markets, but at least, the markets are saying to just overlook some of this data and look what might be coming because of the rise in rates. You have the 30-year mortgage, what, around 6%. I mean, that is going to cause a major pullback in housing. And it already has.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, well, and that's why perhaps the confidence number is all the more remarkable. And by the way, it's in line with what we've got from University of Michigan also that was also a more positive tenor to consumer confidence. Will that remain with the selloff we've seen in stocks? We'll see, I guess, when we get next month's numbers. Brad, what are we seeing in the markets right now?

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, as of right now, we're maintaining some of the early leads that we have amassed on this rebound Tuesday. Yesterday, we took an L, but today, maybe we bounce back? Let's take a look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, right now up fractionally by about 7/10 of a percent. We'll round that off to tech-heavy NASDAQ composite. You're also seeing that up. Let me switch this to a chart view, just so you can see exactly where we've been trending. Of course, we've come off some of the early session highs right there that you've seen, but we're still holding on to about 1.1% in gains right now.

And the S&P 500, taking a look at to the average, you're also seeing that still in the green by about 8/10 of a percent. Again, a case of still being off of some of the highs that we had seen earlier on in today's session. But we'll continue to track that as we move on throughout the rest of today's trading activity.

We've been keeping an eye on some of those sectors since you mentioned consumer confidence. Let's go into the sectors and see exactly where things are performing right now. And there, you're taking a look at XLY, consumer discretionary particularly on this confidence side. You're still not hold onto gains of about 1 and 1/4%. The only laggard right now in the 11 S&P 500 sectors is utilities.

But also, just very briefly, want to take a look at some of the crypto stocks that we've been tracking on the day. With Bitcoin's move higher, continue to keep a close eye on names like Coinbase. Coinbase up by about 5%. This is one of the trending tickers on yahoofinance.com right now. So we're keeping a close eye on them, as well as tertiary players, Square, MicroStrategy as well. And so keep a close eye on some of those crypto names as we move on throughout the rest of today's trading session. Of course, crypto markets, they don't close, though. Julie, I'll toss things on over to you.

JULIE HYMAN: Yep, even if those equities only trade in cash session during US market hours.