Fifty-nine percent of Americans say they are better off financially today than they were a year ago, the highest since 1999, according to a Gallup survey released last week. And nearly three-quarters predict they will do better a year from now, the most optimistic reading that Gallup’s annual “Mood of the Nation” survey has ever recorded.

Other polls and surveys aren’t quite as ebullient, but nearly all show that Americans are far less worried about the economy and their personal financial situations than they were during the last presidential election.

Upbeat sentiment is critical for the U.S. economy because it motivates consumer spending, the most important driver of U.S. economic growth. And President Donald Trump is counting on a strong economy to motivate voters to turn out at the polls and reelect him.

Bryan DeHenau runs a roofing business in Macomb County, Michigan, just outside Detroit. Around the time of the last presidential election, he had enough jobs to keep one crew busy, but some of the gigs were barely profitable. Today he can keep three crews busy during the spring and summer months, and he has been able to raise prices, regularly giving people estimates of $20,000 to totally redo a roof and finding that “they don’t even bat an eye about it anymore.”

“I’m driving a brand-new 2019 Ford F-250. I’ve got work coming out the ying-yang. I’m doing OK,” DeHenau said. “Four years ago, I couldn’t sleep at night. That’s a pretty big turnaround.”

Some of the biggest recent increases in consumer confidence have come from independent voters and less affluent households, according to Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. His team always asks people to explain why they feel confident, and lately they are hearing near-record levels of people saying their income and wealth are rising.

“We’ve only seen this many people mention income gains twice before: 1966 after the 1960s expansion and 2000 after the 1990s expansion,” Curtin said.

In interviews with six small-business owners across the country, all acknowledged that the economy had turned around under President Barack Obama, but they pointed out that several more years of steady growth, solid job gains and additional stock market records under Trump had turned “cautious optimism” into full-blown optimism.

Business owners varied in how much credit they would give Trump personally, but all had examples of how they had more work than they could handle and were buying equipment and bringing on new people in ways that had not happened since before the Great Recession. Trump’s approval rating on the economy hit an all-time high last month, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added 225,000 jobs in January, beating forecasters’ expectations and further dampening concerns about a recession. Many workers have also felt better off financially thanks to tax cuts, cheaper gas prices and minimum-wage increases in more than 20 states. Wage growth has inched up for rank-and-file workers in recent months, although it remains below the stellar levels of the late 1990s.

Economists say one of the biggest drivers of consumer confidence is job quantity. Confidence rises when people feel as if it is easy to get a job, even if it is not a high-paying one.

Job growth has slowed lately, averaging 182,000 a month under Trump vs. 220,000 a month in the 37 months at the end of Obama’s tenure. But the health of the labor market is evident, with the unemployment rate near half-century lows at 3.6 percent. The nation has added over 2 million jobs every year for the past nine years, an unprecedented streak of steady gains.

“Your chance of going to work tomorrow and getting laid off is lower than it’s ever been going back to 1948,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “That feeling of job security is very important.”

DeHenau, 33, calls this the best economy of his working years. He voted for Obama and then Trump. He gives Obama credit for getting the upswing going, but he thinks the economy would not be as good as it now without Trump.

“I give Trump 80 to 90 percent of the credit,” DeHenau said. “Even under Obama when it was good, there was no profitability.”

There has been less praise for Trump in the manufacturing sector, which tumbled into a technical recession last year as the president’s trade war drove up prices and hurt purchases from other parts of the world.

Jamison Scott, who runs a small manufacturing company in Woodbridge, Connecticut, remembers the ugly surprise he got after Trump enacted steel tariffs in March 2018 and steel prices soared about 20 percent.

Scott, who manufactures and distributes air ducts and says he uses American steel, was worried how his company could manage the extra cost – or even keep getting enough steel. One steel shipment he ordered that year showed up with about a quarter less material than what he requested.

But steel prices have come back down in recent months, a welcome relief for Scott, and his business from throughout the country has picked up. Enough cash has been coming in that he bought a new plasma cutter and seam welder, the types of big purchases he had not made in years.

“Customers we haven’t heard from in a while are coming out of the woodwork,” said Scott, the executive vice president of Air Handling Systems. “The biggest difference for me is the volatility is gone.”

Manufacturing is now a smaller part of the overall U.S. economy, which is driven largely by the fast-growing service sector. Still, there are signs of a potential pickup, even for manufacturing. A popular manufacturing gauge, the Institute for Supply Management survey, recently reported its first expansionary reading since July.

Trump’s recent “Phase One” trade deal with China includes promises that China will buy more U.S. manufacturing and agricultural products in the next two years, another reason for optimism in sectors hit hard by the trade war.

“The Chinese are sticking to the Phase One deal,” Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, said in an interview. “The president had a good phone call [Thursday] night with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping. Xi said, ‘Look, the expected purchase of U.S. exports may be slightly delayed, but we will make it.’ ”

Michael Canty, president of Alloy Bellows & Precision Welding in Cleveland, is more confident about manufacturing after the recent China deal and Trump’s signing of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

“All boom cycles have an end – we all know that. But I think this is going to continue for at least another two years,” Canty said. “The reason for that is the trade deals and the regulations that have come off. They are having an effect now.”

There are two big question marks for the U.S. economy this year – how bad the impact of the coronavirus will be and whether business spending will pick up. Kudlow and many private-sector economists have predicted a small impact from the deadly coronavirus on the U.S. economy, shaving off about 0.2 percent from first-quarter growth. But it is yet another reason for leaders of large multinational companies to worry.

While consumers have continued spending at a healthy rate, business investment outside the housing sector contracted from April through December. Many leaders of large corporations do not hold the same economic ebullience that consumers and small-business owners do.

“When we look at the CEO confidence survey, it’s quite a different story,” said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators and surveys at the Conference Board. “They are much more pessimistic. Trade has taken a toll on business investment.”

There are also concerns about the U.S. economy that Democratic presidential candidates have been talking up frequently, especially the lack of higher-paying jobs and the often burdensome costs of health care, child care and college.

Jobs that pay middle-class wages have been going away in recent years, replaced with really high-wage and really low-wage work. That trend is ongoing despite Trump’s repeated promises of a “blue-collar boom.”

“By and large, we are producing a lot of low-quality jobs,” said Mark Muro, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “But a job is a job for a jittery nation.”

The Trump administration is changing a key exemption to America’s trade-remedy laws to make it easier to penalize about two dozen so-called developing countries including China, India and South Africa.

The U.S. on Monday narrowed its internal list of developing and least-developed countries in order to reduce the threshold for triggering a U.S. investigation into whether nations are harming U.S. industries with unfairly subsidized exports, according to a U.S. Trade Representative notice.

In doing so, the U.S. eliminated its special preferences for a list of self-declared developing countries that includes: Albania; Argentina; Armenia; Brazil; Bulgaria; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Georgia; Hong Kong; India; Indonesia; Kazakhstan; the Kyrgyz Republic; Malaysia; Moldova; Montenegro; North Macedonia; Romania; Singapore; South Africa; South Korea; Thailand; Ukraine; and Vietnam.

USTR said the decision to revise its developing country methodology for countervailing duty investigations was necessary because America’s previous guidance – which dates back to 1998 – “is now obsolete.”

The development marks a noteworthy departure from two decades of American trade policy regarding developing nations that could result in more stringent penalties for some of the world’s top exporters.

The move also reflects President Donald Trump’s frustration that large economies like China and India are permitted to receive preferential trade benefits as developing nations at the World Trade Organization.

During his visit to Davos, Switzerland, last month Trump said the WTO hasn’t treated America fairly. “China is viewed as a developing nation. India is viewed as a developing nation. We’re not viewed as a developing nation. As far as I’m concerned, we’re a developing nation, too.”

The goal of the WTO’s special preferences for developing nations is to help poorer countries reduce poverty, generate employment and integrate themselves into the global trading system.

Under WTO rules, governments are required to terminate their countervailing duty investigations if the amount of foreign subsidy is de minimis, which is normally defined as less than 1% ad valorem.

But WTO rules provide a different standard for so-called developing nations that requires investigators to terminate duty investigation if the amount of subsidy is less than 2% ad valorem.

The Trump administration has sought to end these special preferences for nations that fall under certain categories, like those who are members of global economic clubs like the Group of 20, the OECD or who are classified as high-income nations by the World Bank.

Last July, Trump issued an executive memo that asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to determine whether there’s been “substantial progress” toward limiting the number of countries considered developing nations. The U.S. may act unilaterally if not, Trump said.

Several of the de-listed countries in the USTR notice have already agreed to relinquish their developing-country rights in future trade negotiations, including Brazil, Singapore and South Korea.

The S&P 500 Index rose to a new high Monday, with most sectors advancing. Energy company shares proved the exception, declining as West Texas crude fell below $50 a barrel. Treasuries and European bonds edged higher, and the dollar held steady versus a basket of its major peers.

Asia’s main equity gauges fell everywhere other than Shanghai. Traders monitored the restart of Chinese factories and the possible chaos that may ensue as several hundred thousand people begin returning to work at companies such as Apple supplier Foxconn. General Motors says it will restart production in China beginning Feb. 15.

With cases of the coronavirus outside China on the rise and various companies pulling back from international meetings, investors are trying to figure out whether the rate of contagion is stabilizing. In the meantime, monetary authorities across emerging markets have stepped in to help shore up the financial system. The People’s Bank of China moved to keep liquidity ample Monday through reverse-repurchase agreements.

“As disconcerting as the spread of the coronavirus has been to date, the global focus on the illness is likely to produce a solution to stem its spread before long,” John Stoltzfus, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer Asset Management, wrote in a note. “Economic data released last week underscored strength and resilience in the U.S. labor market and pointed toward the sustainability of the U.S. economic expansion.”

The euro declined after the region was buffeted by political headlines. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s succession plan collapsed, and polls put Sinn Fein in place for a possible role in Ireland’s government, depressing the country’s banking stocks. European equities closed higher.

Earnings are due this week from major names such as Alibaba Group Holding, Credit Suisse Group and Nestle.

Elsewhere, emerging-market currencies steadied against the dollar. Bitcoin traded just below $10,000, having risen above that mark over the weekend for the first time since October.

– – –

Here are some key events coming up:

– Earnings season continues with reports including MGM Resorts and Cisco Systems on Monday; Softbank on Wednesday; and Alibaba, Nissan, Credit Suisse, Airbus, Nestle and AIG on Thursday.

– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers his semiannual testimony in Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday; ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

– Thursday brings a gauge of underlying U.S. inflation, the core consumer price index. It’s expected to increase to 0.2% in January, a faster pace than in December.

– China and the U.S. on Friday lower tariffs on billions of dollars of respective imports, as part of the trade deal signed last month.

– – –

These are the main moves in markets:

Stocks

– The S&P 500 Index increased 0.7%, to 3,352.13, as of 4:01 p.m. New York time, the highest on record.

– The Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose 0.1%, to 424.64.

– The MSCI Asia Pacific Index decreased 0.5%, to 168.88.

– The MSCI Emerging Market Index fell 0.4%, to 1,086.80.

Currencies

– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed at 1,207.56, the highest in more than 10 weeks.

– The British pound climbed 0.2%, to $1.2912.

– The euro dipped 0.3%, to $1.0913, hitting the weakest in 19 weeks with its sixth consecutive decline.

– The Japanese yen was little changed at 109.74 per dollar.

– The offshore yuan strengthened 0.3%, to 6.9854 per dollar, the largest increase in four weeks.

Bonds

– The yield on 10-year Treasuries decreased three basis points, to 1.56%, the lowest in a week.

– Germany’s 10-year yield fell three basis points, to -0.41%, the lowest in a week on the largest drop in more than a week.

– Britain’s 10-year yield declined one basis point, to 0.557%, the lowest in a week.

Commodities

– West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.5%, to $49.58 a barrel, the lowest in more than 13 months on the largest fall in a week.

– Gold strengthened 0.2%, to $1,573.67 an ounce, the highest in a week.

– LME copper dipped 1.3%, to $5,663 per metric ton, the largest decrease in two weeks.

The guidelines will apply to all service fee types and cover all kinds of customers from major corporate customers to individual customers.

She said it might affect banks’ revenues but will create fair treatment of customers and set a standard for the financial industry.

Kiatnakin Bank President Philip Chen Chong Tan said the bank was ready to comply with the guidelines.

He added that the guidelines are unlikely to affect revenue as it is a small bank.

Siam Commercial Bank’s president Apiphan Charoenanusorn believes the guidelines will affect banks but not to the extent that it will lead to zero service fee revenue this year.

Naris Sathapholdeja, head of TMB Analytics, said that total service fees of commercial banks last year amounted to Bt191 billion, compared to interest income of Bt480 billion.

Take the yuan. After rising more than 1.5% in the month prior to the Jan. 15 signing of the U.S.-China trade agreement, the currency has relinquished those gains amid concerns that Chinese growth could stumble as the coronavirus spreads. Singapore, a key financial hub, is seeing historic price swings due to angst around the outbreak.

The uncertainty has helped lift Asian currency volatility to its highest level in six months and the greenback to a two-month high, a development that could rekindle efforts by the U.S. administration to “talk down” the dollar.

In addition to anxiety about growth, the yuan may also sway more freely due to a clause in the phase-one trade deal that reaffirms commitments to refrain from competitive devaluation, said Alan Ruskin, Deutsche Bank’s chief international strategist.

China “will have a harder time in general containing volatility if the U.S. is on the lookout for intervention, or surrogate intervention,” Ruskin said by phone.

Both the Australian dollar-yen and New Zealand dollar-yen are “risk blow-up pairs” and can be used as proxies for capturing potential volatility in Asia, Ruskin said. One-year volatility in both pairs is relatively cheap compared to most other Group-of-10 peers, he said.

Record low implied volatility in Europe’s common currency against the U.S. dollar may have an outsized impact on depressing broader gauges of price swings. But it doesn’t mean the euro isn’t subject to choppiness elsewhere. Implied volatility in euro-Swiss franc, a barometer of global risk appetite, has climbed to a premium to euro-dollar volatility. At the lowest in more than two years in the spot market, euro-franc is teetering near a key technical level, a breach of which could spark a sharp move lower by the common currency.

Meanwhile, Eastern European currencies have also seen price swings as central bank policy rates diverge. On Thursday, the Czech central bank unexpectedly raised rates 25 basis points to 2.25% to tame inflation pressures.

Whether these pockets of turbulence spread to the broader market could depend on several factors. To be sure, volatility may not return to levels seen a decade ago should central banks continue to actively use their balance sheets to manage liquidity issues or regulatory barriers to capital movement arise.

Still, the efficacy of persistent central bank accommodation is already being questioned by policy makers including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. It may be a more contentious topic should inflation rise and business activity pick up.

Meanwhile, American targeting of currency devaluations may prompt global officials to slow the pace of intervention. Geopolitical events such as the U.S. presidential elections add an element of uncertainty.

Falling euro volatility has not prevented realized volatility, as measured by the Deutsche Bank CVIX index, from climbing above its implied counterpart, making conditions more appealing for option-buyers. For funding currencies like the euro and yen to move out of a low-volatility regime, short-term realized volatility needs to demonstrate that it has staying power, a condition that would likely require a rise in long-term implied volatility and a weeding out of mean-reverting trading strategies.

Markets may have to strap in as early as this week, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gives his semi-annual congressional testimony.

The largest cryptocurrency found resistance just above that level, reaching as high as $10,194 on Sunday before pulling back, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It similarly struggled with that level in September when it crossed $10,000 — the month that followed saw it lose more than 14%.

In addition, the token is overbought based on the 14-day relative strength index (RSI), which crossed the 70 mark. Assets are considered overbought if the RSI exceeds 70. Those two factors suggest a potential retreat ahead as the coin struggles to meaningfully break out from its recent trading range.

“It’s a consolidating bull market,” Mike McGlone, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence wrote in a recent note. “Volume and open interest in futures, and on-chain addresses used, are primary Bitcoin-adoption metrics that have soundly increased vs. a month ago, supporting price appreciation. The next key story for the benchmark crypto will be its bid to exit the $8,000-$10,000 range.”

On Sunday, Bitcoin surged above the $10,000, marking only the third such major breakout in its history. The first occurred in 2017 before it rose to near $20,000 and, more recently, it broke above it in mid-2019 before retracing.

Bitcoin was up 1.4% as of 10:44 a.m. in New York to trade around $9,884. Litecoin and Ether each gained 1.9%, while the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index — which tracks some of the largest crypto assets, gained 1.8%.

The idea, conceived in a country that already outperforms much of the rich world in education, is to figure out whether a bit more financial acumen will help Finns borrow less.

Finnish household debt has doubled in the past two decades against a backdrop of falling interest rates and the gradual obsolescence of cash as a form of payment. The people of Finland, home to companies like Nokia and Rovio of Angry Birds fame, are known for being more tech savvy than most. But their willingness to embrace digital payments over cash has coincided with less discipline in their spending habits.

Now, a record 7% of Finland’s 5.5 million citizens can’t pay their bills, up by a third over the past decade. In recent years, the authorities have raised the alarm on growth in consumer credit in particular.

Juha Pantzar, executive director of the Guarantee Foundation, which helps over-indebted people regain control of their finances, says the fact that “cash has vanished” has created a new reality that’s “obscuring people’s feel for money.”

“A lot of people have a hard time estimating where their money is spent, how much they will have left at the end of the month, and how much they can afford to borrow,” he said.

About 20 years ago, cash was used in 70% of payment transactions at stores, with cards accounting for the rest. Now, those metrics have flipped: card, mobile and other digital modes of payment were used in more than 80% of the time in 2018, according to data compiled by the central bank.

Olli Rehn, the governor of the Bank of Finland, says, “Consumers have largely already moved to a digital world” when it comes to payments. “People no longer have such physical budget limitations as they used to do, and that makes it harder for people to manage their finances.”

That’s where the central bank hopes to make a difference. Its first step will be to compile data and best practices from organizations already working in the field in a bid to scale up their work and ensure all groups in society are getting adequate assistance. Then, it will set national targets for financial literacy, and work with third-party providers to coordinate the roll-out of the national plan. (The central bank is still working on the details of the program.)

“A lot of work is already being done among young people, but there’s a lot of older people who need help in navigating increasingly digital financial services,” Anu Raijas, a senior adviser at the Bank of Finland who’s formulating the strategy for financial literacy, said by phone. “The aim is to have the data compiled and a strategy ready by the end of the year.”

Finland has already explored other ways to cut household debt. The financial regulator has capped home loans at 85% of a property’s purchase price, and plans for further restrictions are in the works at the Finance Ministry.

By 2023, the government wants to have a credit registry with records of everyone’s borrowing to help lenders assess whether to grant a new loan. Rules on consumer credit were tightened last autumn.

Finnish authorities are worried about the human cost of debt which, in extreme cases, can even result in people being sidelined from the labor market as employers shun workers with poor credit histories, and because people servicing massive debt loads find little benefit in working.

Finland’s debt concerns aren’t limited to its private households. While Denmark, Sweden and Norway all enjoy AAA ratings across the board, Finland stands out for its AA+ grade after government debt repeatedly tested the European Union’s 60% threshold of GDP.

In Finland’s parliament, there’s a broad consensus that keeping consumers as informed as possible on the dangers of debt is key. The plan also has the backing of the financial sector.

“No one should have to learn to manage their finances by trial and error,” said Piia-Noora Kauppi, managing director of Finance Finland, which represents the industry. “These skills should be taught at school much more and much earlier.”

True to style, the Finns are exploring high-tech paths toward educating citizens on how to use their money. In the future, new tools built on machine-learning algorithms will help forecast people’s financial behavior and make personal cash-flow predictions, as well as give advice to consumers on their spending.

The caveat is that “people need to be willing and motivated to use those tools,” Kauppi said. “If you don’t want to face your financial reality, then none of these tools will help.”

Its breach of five figures comes amid an equities rally that’s seen the S&P 500 Index reach new highs as fears abate that the coronavirus will dent global growth.

“The rally is a part of a broader appeal for risky assets as optimism grows that the coronavirus impact might be limited to the first quarter and on optimism that China will play nice with the U.S. on phase-two trade talks,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda.

Cryptocurrencies have been on an upward trend all year, with some analysts and digital-asset enthusiasts suggesting they’ve benefited as safe-haven plays amid ongoing geopolitical concerns around the globe.

“There’s certainly a narrative in the investment community that Bitcoin is solidifying its place as a store of value, a flight to safety, inflation hedge,” Michael Sonnenshein, managing director at Grayscale Investments, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. If history is any guide, the upcoming halving, which is set to happen in May, could also have an impact on the token’s price, he said.

Some Bitcoin enthusiasts are predicting further gains. Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Rob Sluymer, for one, sees it rising through the second quarter this year to trade in a range of $10,000 to $11,000. Mike McGlone, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, says the 2020 outlook for the largest digital token remains favorable. “Similar to gold, positive fundamentals should extend Bitcoin’s price appreciation,” he wrote in a Wednesday note.

Bitcoin peaked at almost $20,000 in December 2017 and finished that year up about 1,400% as the cryptocurrency burst into the mainstream. It plunged 74% the next year, before rebounding almost 100% in 2019.

The EEC spans the provinces of Rayong, Chon Buri and Chachoengsao.

Thailand received orders worth more than Bt900 billion last year from China, accounting for 11.8 per cent of the kingdom’s total exports.

Chinese foreign direct investment in Thailand stood at around Bt260 billion last year.

The chamber also conveyed its best wishes to Chinese people in general and Chinese businessmen in Thailand, strongly believing they can survive the coronavirus crisis.