May

17

Gasp! Microbusinesses not impacted by the stock market! (Ya think?)

May 17, 2007 |

Anita Campbell finds the coolest things.

Today, she points us to the Discover Small Business Watch, a monthly index of economic confidence of small business owners. The thing about this one, though, is that it specifically measures microbusinesses (fewer than five employees).

How cool is that?

So, here’s this month’s Duh moment, brought to you by Discover:

Wall Street gyrations have little to no impact on the day to day reality of microbusiness owners! (Hey, there’s a shocker.)

~ 68% say changes in the stock market have no noticeable impact on their business
~ 88% say that the performance of the stock market “occasionally, rarely or never” influences their business development spending decisions
~ 55% say the stock market does not reflect the reality they deal with on a daily basis
~ 85% have never sold stocks or borrowed against them to help finance their businesses
~ 61% say that, if they had a “sizable” amount of money to spend, they’d invest it in their own business rather than the stock market

Fancy that.

Remember that the next time somebody in Washington starts talking about cutting taxes on dividends or some other investor tax goodies in the same breath as they say the words “targeted small business tax relief.”

Capital gains - yes. Dividends - no.

Also of interest from this month’s reading is that microbusiness owners are very definitely losing confidence in the economy and starting to experience cash flow issues but, in typical small business optimist fashion, a plurality of microbusiness owners do not intend to pull back on their business development spending (advertising, inventories, capital expenditures).

Given what is going on with the larger economic picture, it will be very interesting to see what this index does over the next several months. Thanks, Anita!

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