NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Americans held a wait-and-see pose last week, with consumer confidence virtually unchanged.
The ABC News/Money magazine Consumer Comfort Index, composed of ratings for current economic conditions, stands at -16 on its scale of positive 100 to negative 100. It was virtually the same, -17, for the previous three weeks.
Twenty-nine percent of Americans rate the nation's economy as excellent or good, up from 27 percent the prior week. The highest level of confidence in this category was set at 80 percent in January 2000.
Respondents also expressed slightly more confidence in their own finances as 59 percent rate their personal finances as excellent or good, up one percent from the previous week. The highest rating for this category was set at 70 percent in August 1998 and subsequently matched in January 2000.
But the survey's buying gauge, which measures consumers' willingness to spend, slipped. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say it's an excellent or good time to buy things that they want or need, down from 40 percent the prior week. That puts last week's reading in between the category's 57-percent-high set in January 2000 and its 20-percent-low set in the fall of 1990.
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The index has averaged -21 this year, well off its historical average of -9. At -16 this week, the index is near its high for the year, -15, set on April 20.
Separately, the closely-watched University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell to 90.2 from 90.9 in July, according to market sources quoted by Reuters. Economists, on average, expected a reading of 91, according to a Reuters poll.
The ABC News/Money magazine Consumer Comfort Index represents a rolling average based on telephone interviews with a random sample of about 1,000 adults nationwide each month. This week's results are based on 1,005 interviews in the month ending August 17, 2003, and have an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.
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