The Boock Report

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 …

[Read more...] about Some data/A bitcoin chart

The November NAHB home builder survey jumped another 5 pts to 90 from 85 in October and above the estimate of 85. Keep in mind that 50 is the breakeven and ranges between 0-100. Therefore it can’t go much higher from the current record high. Almost all of the gain was in the Present Situation which rose 6 pts to 96 while the Future Outlook was up 1 pt to 89. …

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Core retail sales in October rose just .1% m/o/m, below the estimate of up .5% and September was revised down by 5 tenths to a gain of .9%. Auto’s/parts, electronics, building materials and online retailing all rose m/o/m but was mostly offset by declines in furniture, food/beverage, health/personal care, clothing, sporting goods, department stores, misc stores (like …

[Read more...] about October retail sales

We talk a lot about the euro heavy dollar index (euro is about half the index) when measuring the direction of the US dollar, which today is a hair away from the weakest level since April 2018. But, there has also been clear dollar weakness specifically against Asian currencies where today the Bloomberg JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index is rising (stronger Asian currencies) …

[Read more...] about The US Dollar

The November NY manufacturing index, the 1st November industrial number seen, fell to 6.3 from 10.5 and that was about half the estimate of 13.5. New orders fell by 8.6 pts to 3.7 while backlogs went further negative to -11.9 from -6.6. Inventories remain below zero at -8.6 vs -14.6 in October and -3.6 in September. Employment rose 2.2 pts to 9.4 but the Workweek fell …

[Read more...] about NY mfr’g, a mixed bag

Pfizer's 90% efficacy rate was just surpassed by Moderna's 94.5% rate. Incredibly impressive and will be another nail in the covid coffin when broadly rolled out in 2021. Again, from a market perspective, it means lower work from home stocks, higher everything else and a continued move up in inflation (mostly in 2021) and interest rates. I feel again that the …

[Read more...] about More great vaccine news, another mixed market response

The preliminary November UoM consumer confidence index fell to 77 from 81.8 and that was below the estimate of little change at 82. The components were very mixed though as Current Conditions were little changed but Expectations fell to 71.3 from 79.2. One year inflation expectations rose two tenths to 2.8%, a 3 month high. For perspective, the 5 yr average is 2.6%. …

[Read more...] about Consumer confidence ahead of a tough few months

The October PPI rose .3% headline, one tenth core and two tenths if you also take out trade. The headline was one tenth more than expected, the core one tenth less and the other was in line. Versus last year headline PPI is up .5% and the core rate by 1.1%. Food prices jumped 2.4% m/o/m led by vegetable prices spikes while energy was higher by .8% m/o/m. Services …

[Read more...] about Wholesale prices

After the soft 10 yr auction on Tuesday, today’s 30 yr was soft as well. The yield of 1.68% was above the when issued of 1.674%. The bid to cover of 2.29 was below the one year average of 2.35 and matches the 2nd lowest in a year. The only salvage was that dealers got stuck with 21.6% of the auction which is the 12 month average. So the highest yields since March …

[Read more...] about 30 yr soft too/More thoughts on inflation