US small business confidence dips a bit more than expected in April, NFIB says

A closely followed gauge of small business sentiment plumbed a 10-year low last month as confidence in the economic outlook, as well for sales and earnings waned.

The National Federation of Independent Business's confidence index slipped from a reading of 90.1 in March to 89.0 for April (consensus: 89.7).

Most worrying however was a two-point dip in a sub-index tracking firms' intentions to invest in capital equipment to within just one point of its Covid lows, said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Together with the similarly grim trajectory in the capex intentions indexes from the regional Fed surveys, these data strongly suggest that business investment spending is set to fall outright, if it isn't already.

One bright spot was a separate sub-index that revealed a three-point dip in the proportion of survey respondents who said that credit was "harder to get", nearly erasing the previous month's spike.

While welcome, it was unlikely to signal the end of credit tightening, he added.

Indeed, interest rates on short-term loans, at 8.5%, were at their highest level since October 2007.