Finance

More traders turn bullish in first quarter, Schwab survey says

Published

2 months ago

February 25, 2025

Business Finance News

Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) floor on Feb. 20, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

An expensive stock market didn’t prevent traders from getting more bullish as investors increasingly bet that the bull run could keep chugging along, according to Charles Schwab’s new quarterly client survey.

The bulls continue to outnumber the bears among traders by 51% to 34%, said Schwab’s survey, which polled 1,040 active traders last month. Young traders under the age of 40 especially showed a spike in optimism, with bullishness jumping to 59%. That compares to 47% in the fourth quarter. The positive sentiment came even as two-thirds of the traders believe the market is overvalued, the survey said.

“It’s clear that the majority of traders believe there’s some froth in the market but on balance they also feel like there’s still more room for the bulls to run,” said James Kostulias, head of trading services at Charles Schwab. “More than half of traders plan to move additional money into stocks in Q1.”

While bullishness indicates positive views on the market, it can also be seen as a contrary indicator when there are signs of excess.

S&P 500

After a booming two-year period in which the S&P 500 climbed more than 50%, the momentum has slowed as of late with rising concerns about an economic slowdown and heightened volatility from rapid policy changes from the new administration. The equity benchmark is only up 1.3% on the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has dipped into negative territory for 2025.

In terms of sectors, traders are most bullish on energy, tech, finance and utilities. These sectors are typically beneficiaries under the Trump administration due to potential deregulation.

The survey also detected a significant drop in the number of traders who believe a recession will occur in the U.S. — only a third of the respondents called it “somewhat likely,” compared to 54% in the prior quarter.

The majority of traders also didn’t see a reacceleration in inflation, with two-thirds of them seeing price pressures holding steady.

Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

4 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.