The Conference Board released its latest reading of the Consumer Confidence Index today. US consumer confidence fell in February for the first time in four months as Americans’ views deteriorated about the outlook for the economy, the job market and financial conditions. The crazy part of The Conference Board report is continued confidence by consumers that the stock market will continue its upward trend.

But first, a quick note regarding the release of last month’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes. Officials indicated at their last meeting that they were not in a rush to cut interest rates. No cuts would be coming until the FOMC held “greater confidence” that inflation is “moving down sustainably to 2 percent.”

While the minutes acknowledged the “solid progress” being made, the committee viewed some of that progress as “idiosyncratic” and possibly due to factors that won’t last.

Let’s take a look at the latest macroeconomic indicators and how the FOMC and the stock markets might react.

The focus today is on retirement. We either look forward to retirement or dread the day that it comes. It comes down to how much you have planned for it, saved for it and accepted that it will happen ready or not. Some hope it will all work out in the end, so they didn’t think much about it. Well hope is not a strategy. We will also talk about handing off your wealth to the next generation. 

Before we start a discussion into what seems like science fiction made real, let’s look into the past. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that was coined by John McCarthy, a legendary American computer and cognitive scientist, in the 1950s. He is widely regarded as one of the "founding fathers" of AI. Alongside other luminaries like Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon, McCarthy played a pivotal role in shaping the field.

McCarthy, a Stanford professor and Turing Award recipient, developed the programming languages known as LISP and ALGOL. LISP was pivotal in AI development and research while ALGOL popularized the concept of time-sharing in computing, allowing multiple users to interact with a computer at the same time – a key concept for those that would expand McCarthy’s work in the decades to come.

Outside of financial reporting, articles on inflation rates usually quote the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. But financial writers in-the-know will reference “the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation,” the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, or PCE. Today we’ll take a look at the two measures of inflation, how they are determined and why the Federal Reserve prefers one over the other.

But before we dive in, let’s take a look at some of the economic news released last week. Punxsutawney Phil, the famous weather-casting groundhog, didn’t see his shadow last Friday, and so predicted an early spring. Let’s see if the economy looks as rosy.