Quotes from Societe Generale Cross Asset Research:
-Continued improvements in the US labor market conditions, combined with a significant lift from plunging gasoline pump prices, likely propelled the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index six points higher to 109.0 in February - the rosiest reading since July 2007.
-As always, we will be paying particular attention to the labor market differential (LMD) - the percentage of respondents noting that jobs are plentiful less those feeling they are hard to get - for clues to potential changes in the civilian unemployment rate.
-The LMD jumped by 4.9 percentage points to a seven-year high of -5.2% in January, suggesting that the uptick in joblessness contained in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent report may prove short-lived.
