Economic Doomers Just Dived Into the Shallow End of the Pool
Americans are still spending enthusiastically, but their focus is on experiences rather than goods.
Wrong idea.
Photographer: Leber/ullstein bild/Getty Images
After being so consistently wrong in recent years about how the US economy and households would perform coming out of the pandemic, doomsayers should have learned their lesson. But there they were in full force after Pool Corp. said late Monday that it was lowering its earnings outlook because households aren’t installing backyard swimming pools as they once did. Here’s how Pool put it:
This was clearly a shock, as evidenced by Pool’s shares plunging more than 11% at one point Tuesday, the biggest intraday decline since 2020. Not only that, but the shares of Home Depot Inc., Lowe’s Cos. and other building-related stocks dropped in sympathy. As one economist wrote in a note to clients, “Again, this feels much more like a 1.5% type growth rate economy and not 3.0%.”