The latest data out for US house prices show an increase in February according to CoreLogic. Both including and excluding distressed sales, house prices rose in February after stagnating in the latter half of 2013. Meanwhile, mortgage applications for both purchasing and refinancing remain at...
We had two regional manufacturing surveys released today: Chicago PMI and the Dallas Fed’s Texas Manufacturing Survey. Consensus estimates had expected the Chicago PMI to come in at 59 instead the headline index came in at 55.9 for the slowest reading since August. The Texas...
Quite a bit of US data was released this morning. The major releases were GDP 3rd revision, Corporate Profits, Initial Jobless Claims, & Pending Home Sales. Let’s take a quick look at each....
We had three US housing related economic releases today: FHFA House Price Index, S&P Case-Shiller, and new home sales. The two price series both slightly beat consensus while new home sales came in exactly at consensus. FHFA house price increased by 7.4% year-over-year in January...
Existing home sales fell to 4.6 million homes in February which is the lowest level since July 2012. Existing home sales are now down over 7% year-over-year. The weakness this month was centered in the Midwest and Northeast. The South and West regions both saw...
There are 609 companies in the MSCI North America. Of which, 104 (17.1%) are in the consumer discretionary sector. Only the financial sector (109 stocks or 17.9%) account for a larger share in the MSCI North America....
The NAHB Housing Market Index was only able to marginally bounce in March after the record one month free fall in February. The headline number came in at 47 vs expectations of 50. The West region was particularly weak. It dropped another 5 points to...
At the peak of the of shadow banking system in 2007 total asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) outstanding was over $1.2 trillion (or 8.3% of GDP). Today, ABCP outstanding is about $233 billion (or 1.4% of GDP) and still declining....
US small businesses can’t break out of the malaise they have felt since the great recession hit. The headline of the small business survey fell from 94 to 91.4 in February (vs expectations of 94)....
Margin debt in NYSE accounts increased again in January to an all-time high. This series tends to top out before major market corrections occur. Margin debt is now at an all-time has a percentage of total market capitalization....
The housing data has been all over the place so far in 2014. The good news today is new home sales jumped nearly 10% month-over-month to a five year high level of 468K for January....
The Case-Shiller Home Price Index has now had back to back monthly declines for the first time since Oct-Nov 2012. Granted the declines were small but we are seeing other evidence that housing prices lost some momentum at the end of last year....
Existing home sales fell by -5.1% month-over-month in January. Existing home sales have now declined five of the past six months are now down on a year-over-year basis (5.13%). Mean and average prices, however, remain higher on a year-over-year basis (8.8% and 10.7%, respectively)....
Housing starts for January missed by a considerable margin this morning. Consensus estimates were in the range of 950K while the actual number came in at 880K....
This morning the NAHB Housing Market Index showed a large 10-point drop in January. This is, in fact, the largest decline on record for the Housing Market Index. Traffic of perspective buyers also had a large decline. The nine point decline in the traffic of...
