S&P CoreLogic said its September 20 city index showed a 6.6% y/o/y home price increase. Double digit gains in Phoenix and Seattle led the way while Chicago, NY and SF showed the slowest rate of gains but still multiples of the level of CPI at 4-6%. While the Federal Reserve continues to look for inflation, look no further. This is great for the seller and for …
[Read more...] about Home price gains accelerate further/Consumer Confidence/Mfr’g
After a Fed career of encouraging government, businesses, and households to borrow, borrow, borrow via easy money/QE, Janet Yellen now gets to eat her own cooking. I see this as nothing but US dollar negative. With further dollar weakness and now a vaccine, I see no reason why the CRB commodity index can't get back to the 180+ area, especially now that oil prices …
[Read more...] about Yellen, US dollar/Business confidence in Europe
The US Markit November manufacturing and services PMI rose 1.6 pts m/o/m to 57.9 with manufacturing up by 3.3 pts m/o/m to 56.7 and services higher by .8 pts to 57.7. With services Markit said “Contributing to the steep rise in business activity was a faster increase in new orders at service providers…A number of survey respondents noted that new domestic client …
[Read more...] about US PMI again higher, as are price pressures
So the US dollar index (about half is the euro) is finally breaking to the lowest level since late April, albeit by a hair. The continued weakness is due to a few factors such as the big picture ones like the exploding US debts and deficits and rising current account deficit along with the short term one that we're seeing a risk on trade on the heels of the very …
Here are a few of my thoughts on what Steve Mnuchin wrote to Jay Powell: 1)As Mnuchin is about to leave DC he wants to say 'mission accomplished.' 2)With many of these facilities barely being used, he wants the money back to allocate to a possible fiscal deal. 3)Once a government program is created, it never really dies. 4)Good riddance to the Primary and …
Existing home sales in October, likely reflecting contract signings done in the summer, totaled 6.85mm, above the estimate of 6.47mm and up from 6.57mm in September. That is now quickly approaching the 2005 peak of 7.25mm. All four regions saw m/o/m increases. The number of days on the market was just 24 vs 26 in September and 27 in August. The problem remains …
[Read more...] about Housing demand robust but so are the price gains
Initial jobless claims rose to 74k2 from 711k last week (revised up by 2k) and that was 42k more than expected. This is for the week ended November 14th. Those receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (for those that don’t normally qualify for initial claims) rose by 25k to 320k. For the week before, continuing claims fell to 6.37mm from 6.8mm in the week prior and …
I wrote last Thursday that strictly from a sentiment standpoint, the level of bullishness was a negative for stocks on a short term basis. And notwithstanding the Moderna news Monday, the SPX is below where it was last Wednesday. Yesterday Investors Intelligence said Bulls rose closer to 60 at 59.6 from 59.2 while Bears fell to 18.2 from 19.4. That near 60 level and …
October housing starts totaled 1.53mm, above the estimate of 1.46mm and September was revised up by 44k to 1.46mm. The m/o/m gain was solely driven by single family as multi family was unchanged for a 3rd month. Permits on the other hand were slightly less than expected at 1.55mm, unchanged with September. Single family was up a touch while multi family fell a …
After declines in 6 of the past 7 weeks, the MBA said purchase applications rose 3.5% w/o/w, getting back some of what it lost over the prior two weeks. They are still up by 26% y/o/y. We've seen a plateau in the pace of applications to buy a home since May with much of that likely due to the dearth of inventory but I believe recently some of that is the affordability …
Peter is the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group and is a CNBC contributor.
