“Good morning, Pooh Bear. If it is a good morning. Which I doubt.”
If there were ever a line that captured the current mood of the American consumer, that might be it.
The latest reading from the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey fell to 47.6 in April—the lowest level since 1952, as the chart below shows.
Even at its worst, sentiment has never looked this… Eeyore.
Let that sink in. Lower than the oil embargo. Lower than 1970s stagflation. Lower than 2008, when the financial system itself looked like it might come apart at the seams. Lower than COVID, when the world quite literally shut down.
We’ve been through a lot.
Wars. Bubbles. Crashes. Pandemics. A 57% market drawdown. Government bailouts.
And yet somehow, this is when we feel the worst.
It’s a bit… Eeyore.
Source: Reddit
Now, to be fair to our tail-pinned friend from the Hundred Acre Wood, Eeyore has always had a point. He’s often interpreted as a symbol of chronic pessimism—or, depending on your view, a brutally honest realist. He doesn’t sugarcoat. He doesn’t chase hype. He simply observes the world as it is, sighs, and carries on.
“It’s snowing still. And freezing. However, we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”
There’s a kind of wisdom in that. Perspective matters. But so does balance—and that’s where today’s economic narrative starts to get interesting.
While the consumer sounds like Eeyore on a cloudy Monday morning, the underlying economy is behaving more like Tigger on espresso.
Small business optimism is quietly firming. Nearly one-third of small businesses expect to hire over the next 12 months. CFO surveys suggest AI isn’t the job-destroying villain many feared… it’s barely denting hiring plans at all. In fact, from 2023 to 2025, AI created 640,000 jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That’s not contraction. That’s expansion.
Layer on top of that what JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon recently pointed out: a powerful mix of fiscal stimulus, deregulation tailwinds, AI-driven capital investment, and a Federal Reserve that, despite recent inflation worries, has recently shifted back toward asset purchases.
In other words, the engine is running.
Not idling—it’s revving.
So why do so many Americans feel like they’re trudging through mud?
Part of it is simple and very human: we experience the economy through prices, not policy. Gasoline, groceries, rent—these are the daily touchpoints. And they’re impossible to ignore.
Inflation, even as it cools, leaves a residue. It’s cumulative. It lingers in memory longer than it does in data. Prices may not rise as quickly, but they are NOT coming down, as you can see below.
Inflation may be cooling… but the bill at checkout hasn’t noticed.
And that creates a disconnect.
Wall Street sees earnings growth, capital expenditure cycles, and productivity gains from AI.
Main Street sees a grocery bill that still feels too high and a tank of gas that reminds them of it every week.
Both are true.
But they are not the same story.
And that’s where the Eeyore analogy becomes more than just a clever framing device… it becomes a useful lens.
Eeyore isn’t wrong. He’s just incomplete.
Source: Pinterest
Consumers today are, in many ways, attached to the recent past—anchored to the inflation shock, conditioned by volatility, and cautious after years of uncertainty. That caution shows up in sentiment surveys. It shows up in headlines. It shows up in conversations.
But beneath that, something else is happening.
Capital is being deployed. Infrastructure is being built. AI isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a spending cycle. Energy demand is rising. Productivity gains are beginning to emerge. Businesses, particularly small and mid-sized ones, are positioning for growth… not retreat.
That’s not an economy in decline.
It’s an economy in transition.
And transitions rarely feel comfortable in real time.
If you think back to past cycles, the emotional trough often comes not at the economic bottom, but somewhere in the messy middle—when the worst has passed, but the memory of it hasn’t.
That may be where we are today.
The market, for its part, tends to look forward. It discounts future conditions, not current feelings. And if the ingredients Dimon highlighted… stimulus, investment, deregulation, and innovation continue to build, then the foundation for the next leg of growth is already in place.
Which brings us back to Eeyore.
What makes his character enduring isn’t just his pessimism… it’s the fact that, despite it, he keeps showing up. His friends don’t try to change him. They include him. They move forward together. And, more often than not, things turn out better than he expects. That might be the quiet lesson here.
The consumer may feel like Eeyore. The data may even justify it at times. The media—and the internet—often reinforce those feelings. But the broader story… the one unfolding underneath the surface, is more dynamic, more resilient, and arguably more optimistic than sentiment alone would suggest.
So yes, maybe it doesn’t feel like a “good morning.”
But it may be a better one than we think.
And if history is any guide, by the time it feels good again, a lot of the opportunity will already be behind us.
Eeyore would probably doubt that.
But then again… he usually does.
Hopefully, it makes you smile as we keep “Moving Life Forward.”
© 2026 Jesse Hurst
Senior Wealth Manager
The views stated are not necessarily the opinion of Cetera and should not be construed directly or indirectly as an offer to buy or sell any securities mentioned herein. Due to volatility within the markets mentioned, opinions are subject to change without notice. Information is based on sources believed to be reliable; however, their accuracy or completeness cannot be guaranteed. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
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Featured Blog Image Source: iStock.com/Overearth