• Consumer confidence fell for the fourth consecutive month, and consumers’ outlook on business conditions and their own income fell to the lowest level in 12 years. The Conference Board says confidence has fallen “well below the threshold…that usually signals a recession ahead.”

The Conference Board released its latest Consumer Confidence Survey on Tuesday, which revealed consumer confidence fell for the fourth consecutive month.

Notably, the Conference Board’s Expectations Index—which is based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell to 65.2, the lowest level in 12 years “and well below the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead.”

“Consumers’ expectations were especially gloomy, with pessimism about future business conditions deepening and confidence about future employment prospects falling to a 12-year low,” Stephanie Guichard, senior economist of global indicators at the Conference Board, wrote in a statement. “Meanwhile, consumers’ optimism about future income—which had held up quite strongly in the past few months—largely vanished, suggesting worries about the economy and labor market have started to spread into consumers’ assessments of their personal situations.”

Compared to February, fewer consumers in March expected their incomes to increase—and conversely, more people expected their income to actually decrease going forward. Their outlook for the labor market at large also deteriorated, with fewer people expecting more jobs to be available and more people expecting business conditions to worsen.

“Comments on the current administration and its policies, both positive and negative, dominated consumers’ write-in responses on what is affecting their views of the economy,” the Conference Board said. 

March’s big drop in consumer confidence was driven largely by people over 55 years old, followed by those between 35 and 55.

Notably, this pessimism extended to the stock market, where expectations turned negative for the first time since 2023. Markets experienced a massive selloff earlier this month amid tariff uncertainty, which erased all of the S&P 500’s post-election gains.

“In March, only 37.4% expected stock prices to rise over the year ahead—down nearly 10 percentage points from February and 20 percentage points from the high reached in November 2024,” Guichard said. For what it’s worth, what consumers are experiencing appears to match the sentiment on Wall Street, where many economists expecting the Trump administration to pursue “an exceptionally pro-growth agenda” are now feeling distressed amid the heightened risks of a recession.

Consumers are also more worried about inflation than they were in February, remaining particularly “concerned about high prices for key household staples like eggs and the impact of tariffs.” The Commerce Department in February said Americans sharply cut back on spending amid concerns about tariffs’ effects on the economy. On Wednesday, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee warned that inflation will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if businesses start baking consumers’ fears into their own forecasts.

The Conference Board will release its next report on consumer confidence on April 29.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Olympus Partners has $4 billion to invest after the middle market private equity firm wrapped up fundraising for its latest flagship fund. The firm said Wednesday that its eighth pool came in at $3.5 billion, and jumped to $4 billion with the inclusion of coinvestments from its LPs and expected reinvestments, according to a March 26 letter to Olympus investors. Olympus had set a $4 billion hard cap for Fund VIII, the maximum the fund was permitted to raise from investors.

Olympus spent roughly a year marketing for its eighth pool, which raised 15% more than its prior fund. Olympus Growth Fund VII collected $3.04 billion in late 2017.

Earlier this month, Fortune reported that Olympus fund VIII had raised $2.87 billion.

Olympus is the PE firm from Chairman and CEO Rob Morris, who is also its founder. The firm invests in business services, food services, consumer products, healthcare services, financial services, industrial services and manufacturing. Since launching in 1988, Olympus has raised $12 billion in capital. The firm has also returned $6 billion to investors over the past three years, including $3 billion in 2024, Fortune has reported.

Morris, in the letter, discussed the tariff-driven policy of the Trump administration, which has caused rampant stock market volatility, and fears of a recession. Morris said private equity managers should do their best to avoid the “incoming missiles” of tariffs. For businesses with a supply chain heavily dependent on tariff targets, he advised diversifying to safer geographies or pursuing tariff exempted alternatives. “There are many other tactical moves, but no foolproof plan to completely avoid the economic storm a trade war could ignite,” Morris wrote in the letter.

Fund VIII began investing in January and has so far completed two transactions. In January, Olympus acquired Accelevation, a provider of infrastructure products and services to the data center market, for $455 million. The PE firm also scooped up generic drug maker PAI Pharma for $605 million in February.  The deals were “the fastest Olympus has purchased two investments at the advent of a Fund,” according to the letter.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Fidelity says it is “actively testing” a stablecoin, but has no plans to launch the product at this time, a company spokesperson told Fortune on Wednesday. 

The traditional investment company’s experimentation with a stablecoin—a type of cryptocurrency designed to fluctuate in line with fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar—comes as President Donald Trump ushers in an era of crypto-friendly policy in Washington, marking a major break with the previous administration. Trump has specifically pushed for Congress to pass stablecoin Bitcoin, according to its website. It was also one of the first asset managers permitted to list its Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the stock market, which launched early last year. 

The company has also joined a growing chorus of financial service companies seeking to digitize traditional assets like stocks and bonds using blockchain technology. Earlier this week, the company filed to register a blockchain-based digital version of its U.S. dollar money market fund—a type of mutual fund that invests in low-risk, short-term debt securities—with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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