I hate to break this to you but I won’t be writing next weekend. I hope being deprived of all this earth-shattering insight won’t ruin your holiday weekend 🙂
We covered a lot of ground this week, while slowly extracting ourselves from the post-election fog – if not entirely. Here are some of the interesting things we’re seeing:
Macro-economic sentiment was more volatile in the past week than we’ve ever seen it. After completely cratering in the first few days after the election, things seemed to bounce back in time for our release on Tuesday. Confidence in the future of the US economy and the job market recovered particularly well. We may see this volatility continue in the coming weeks.
This jump in confidence could spur more holiday spending. The numbers had been fairly stagnant until the past two weeks, owed largely to people saying they were “very concerned” about the economy and jobs. If the economic sentiment numbers are any predictor, we may see spending loosen up. As expected, a larger percentage of people say they will be shifting more of their spending online this year.
Verizon seems to have halted its pattern of subscriber shrinkage, if only temporarily. If you follow the mobile carrier category, you know that Verizon has been pretty dominant for a long time. But Verizon started to show some chinks in its armor early this year, with subscriber numbers underperforming for a string of several months. The company’s strategy around the iPhone 7 seemed to stop the bleeding in October and early November, with numbers stabilizing and even rebounding slightly. Time will tell if this is a sustained rebound or just a blip.
Fake news on the Internet is a real problem, according to 73% of Americans. The issue crosses party lines but is particularly troublesome to women and Baby Boomers.
Perhaps not entirely unrelated, as many as 1/3 of social media users say they unfriended someone over the election. This one was way more about party ID, however. Democrats were significantly more likely to say they banished a friend from the Facebook feed.
One in ten Americans are going to celebrate at least one “Friendsgiving” this weekend, myself included, even though I hadn’t even heard of the term until last week. The trend is really gaining traction with Millennials, which means it may only become more popular over time.
Regardless of how you are planning to celebrate, I wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings and a relaxing holiday break. Look for more from me in December.
JD
