Our favorite statistic to look at whenever the monthly employment reports rolls around is actually 3 statistics multiplied together. We take Payroll Employment x Average Weekly Hours x Average Hourly Earnings to come up with a ”National Income Proxy”....
US existing home sales dropped 1.9% in September following a downwardly revised reading for August. Median home selling price has fallen over 7% since making a 5-year high in June. The number of months supply has remained right around 5 months over the past half...
The Boom-Bust Barometer (Commodity Prices/Unemployment Claims) has had a very high correlation with stock prices over the past decade. The rise in unemployment claims has driven it lower. We will wait to see if the end of the government shutdown will bring unemployment claims back...
The NAHB Housing Market Index ticket down from 57 to 55 in October. However, the index has shown a surprisingly strong negative correlation with the Unemployment Rate (Index goes up, Unemployment rate goes down). This relationship would suggest that the unemployment rate continues to fall...
The latest data from the OECD leading indicators shows that growth in Europe seems to be gaining momentum (except for Sweden and Switzerland) while in Asia growth is below trend (except for Japan and South Korea)....
Initial unemployment claims were hit by a variety of ”one-off” factors including an IT upgrade in California and temporary layoffs in the private sector due to the government shutdown. The 4-week moving average moved from 305k to 325k....
One data point does not make a trend, but we will be watching to see if the recent down tick in Australian consumer confidence is leading the US manufacturing ISM lower....
Mortgage applications have only slightly bounced after plunging from May to September....
