The latest (February) construction spending report was released by the Census Bureau today. This report provides a ”monthly estimate of total dollar value construction done in the US” for both new structures and improvements to existing structures. It also covers both public and private projects....
NYSE margin debt increased by $20 billion in February. The one-month change is the largest change in 8 months. Margin debt is at the second highest level of all time and it currently stands just $787 million below the all-time high set in February 2014. ...
Throughout QE3, one of our favorite charts to look at was the three-month change in total fed assets. You could overlay this series with bonds or stocks or other economic indicators and find some interesting relationship....
Inflation is falling and so are inflation expectations. We and the majority of the rest of the financial community have been highlighting this for most of 2015....
In the few minutes since the release of the FOMC statement and since the Fed dropped the word ”patient” as expected, the S&P 500 has risen by 30 points. Here are a few takeaways from the latest Fed projections and interest rate dot plot. Real...
February housing starts were released this morning and they were pretty terrible. Expectations were for starts to come in around 1.048 million. Instead, housing starts came in at a paltry 897K. Housing starts are now at the level as they were in January 2013....
While we recognize that the negative year-over-year change in the US CPI may soon reverse given gas prices have risen by nearly 30 cents, we wanted to highlight how rare a negative year-over-year print is in the US....
After starting the year off with a bang (thanks to refinancing activity), US mortgage applications are tumbling back towards the depressed 2014 levels. Mortgage apps fell for the third straight week even as the purchase index rose for the first time in seven weeks....
US existing home sales fell by 4.9% in January to 4.82 million. This is the lowest level since April of last year. The western region remains by far the weakest region while the south remains the strongest. Months supply remained relatively steady at 4.7 months...
On Tuesday, the spread between the US 10-year bond and the German 10-year bond reach 180 basis points (currently at 176 basis points). This was the widest spread since May 11, 1989....
Since the depths of the financial crisis, the rebound in consumer credit has been polarized. On the one hand you have non-revolving consumer credit (i.e. car loans, student loans, etc.), which briefly declined on a year-over-year basis in 2009 and early 2010 before violently rebounding...
The latest data (November) out of the US Department of Transportation for miles driven on US roads shows that more miles were driven on an annualized basis in November than in any month since July 2008....
New initial unemployment claims fell slightly for the week ending on January 16th from 316K to 309K....
As was widely reported yesterday, 3Q GDP growth was the strongest since 9/30/2003. However, less widely reported was the fact the intellectual property products contributed the most to real GDP in 32 quarters (9/30/2006). Fixed investment overall contributed 121 basis points to real GDP....
As has seemingly been the case all year (or maybe even the past four years), we had a mixed bag of economic releases today in the United States. On the positive side, we had the Chicago Fed National Activity Index post the highest monthly number...
