The U.S. stock market welcomes a historic high moment while consumer confidence has never been so low.

The emotions of Americans are obviously very bad, but the stock market is clearly not like that. This is not usually the case. Looking back in history, high stock prices often accompany cheerful consumers, and vice versa. Just how bad is consumer confidence? Americans' emotions have just hit a milestone. Last Friday, the University of Michigan reported that its consumer confidence index had dropped to the lowest level in over 70 years of survey history. Consumer confidence was already low at the beginning of the year; the outbreak of the Iran war at the end of February caused gasoline prices to soar, leading to a sharp decline in this indicator. Prior to this year, the index's previous low point was in June 2022, when the inflation rate was at its highest level in decades. The consumer confidence reading released on Friday was even 10% lower than that low point. "Prices are still extremely high, the labor market has weakened significantly over the past four years, and we are now in the midst of a war," said Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan's Consumer Survey. "I don't think it's surprising that the index fell below the level of June 2022." However, looking at the performance of the stock market, also on Friday, the S&P 500 index achieved its eighth consecutive week of gains, and the Dow Jones Index hit a new closing high for the second trading day in a row.