Terry Lane is a writer for Investopedia with 25 years of experience in journalism and communications. He covers personal finance, Congress, government regulations, and economics. Joe Raedle / Getty ...

The hard data - growth, inflation, jobs - were mostly okay, reflecting a continuation of the solid progress on all fronts made by the US economy in 2024. Confidence is a human sentiment, and thus ...

* Hard data matters more as a guidepost for the economy, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and earnings prospects. Economic data gets released every week. Most of it is "high-frequency" data, which ...

Several recent consumer sentiment surveys have shown a deterioration of “soft data.” However, economists are still waiting to see if it appears in the “hard data” of retail and inflation reports. Soft ...