Perhaps you saw this headline in the WSJ the other day.

With signs growing that the recession has ended, U.S. consumer confidence rebounded in August, especially regarding expectations for the economy six months from now, a report released Tuesday said.
The current month's reading was far above economists' expectations of 47.0, according to a survey conducted by Dow Jones Newswires.

Robert Oak did a great job breaking down the numbers, which showed that things weren't nearly as rosy as first suggested. In fact, the survey didn't make all that much sense.
Well, it turns out that there were two other consumer surveys released this week that the media mostly overlooked, that weren't nearly as positive.

One of the surveys was the Washington Post-ABC News Consumer Comfort Index. While sentiment did increase this week, it is still at negative 45, not far off of all-time lows.

The other survey that came out today was the Reuter-UM Consumer Confidence survey. It was an absolute disaster.

Consumer confidence slipped backward from July to August, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, released moments ago.
The index -- a combination of how consumers are feeling about their situation right now and how they envision their situation six months down the road -- sat at 65.7 in August, a slight retreat from July's 66 reading.
It was a four-month low for the index. The read did, however, beat expectations, which forecast it to fall further.

After 3,000 DOW points, the consumer still doesn't feel good about the economy. Why? Because the economy is about jobs, not stock prices.