Small Business Finance News

Survey Finds SMB Optimism Drops 10 Points

Written by James Conroy
Published: 5/26/2009

After three months of gains, small business optimism falls.

It looks like the optimism felt by the nation's small businesses was short lived as the May Discover Small Business Watch dropped more than 10 points.

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The survey finds that after reaching its highest point in more than a year, the optimism level of small business owners fell sharply with the index dropping to 78.1 in May.

Ryan Scully, director of Discover's business credit card, said although the index has fallen the previous gains mean it's not all bad news for small business owners.

"We saw cash flow problems jump this month to their highest level in two and a half years, which is certainly not going to boost the optimism of a small business owner, especially in this economic climate," he said. "However, for the past three months we've been recording our highest confidence levels since summer of 2008, so all is not lost."

But the survey did find that a greater percentage of small business owners feel the economy is getting worse, have experienced cash flow problems and rate the economy as "poor" when compared with April.

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