The pending homes sales reported this week for April fell by the largest amount ever recorded, 21.8% from March and down 33.8% year over year. While that is very bad news and could be an indication of falling prices in the months ahead all is not dire. Reported earlier ‘new’ home sales rose month over […]
This morning the Retail Sales report for April was released and it was much worse than expected. Sales fell by 16.4% from falling 8.3% the month before. That was 4% worse than expected. If you remove expensive autos, sales fell 17.2%. Industrial production fell 11.2% and capacity utilization shrank to 64.9%. A bit of good […]
There has been a constant barrage of pundits all predicting where the stock market is going to go. There is no consensus. Many of these people are professional hedge fund managers, educators, or expert economists working for the big money houses i.e. Goldman Sacks, Wells Fargo, and so on. All these experts are usually wrong. […]
We are seeing a few April economic numbers filter in, but most of the reports are about March when the country just started to shut down the economy. The March Durable Goods report top-line number was supposed to be down 12.8% but was actually down 14.4%. The second-largest drop ever recorded. The reason for the […]
The reaction to the corvid virus has caused huge damage to the world economy. As bad as it is, the recovery is going to happen though maybe not as fast as we would like. However, there are some areas of the economy that have permanently changed. Parts of the economy hit hardest are restaurants, theaters, […]
This morning we received a good look at the damage done by the ‘stay at home order’ for March. Retail sales fell 8.7% and removing the autos sales still fell 4.5%. Industrial production fell more than expected by 5.4%, capacity utilization fell to 72.7% from 77%. The home builders index fell to 30 from 72. […]
The only meaningful economic report that we should pay attention to is the weekly jobless claims. There were another 6.6 million claims this week and for the last three weeks, it is over 17 million. When that number begins to fall, it will be a reflection of everyone returning to work. Also, watch the numbers […]
The ISM report for March was released. Although it was bad, it was better than expected. Then again March was the beginning of the shut down so April will be worse. The number fell to 49.1% from 50.1%. It was expected to fall to 44%. Most factories felt the collapse of orders so the new […]
With the unemployment claims exploding to 3.28 million from the last week of 280,000. There is little doubt of how much damage our economy is facing due to the stay at home orders. Those numbers are not likely to fall for weeks. However, reports out of Germany and the Netherlands seems to provide hope. In […]
It does little good to look back as the economic data comes in for February. Those numbers will show how the economy was, not how it is. One report out yesterday, the Flash Market PMI manufacturing and services for March is telling the story of what we are currently going through. It is the first […]