Recent Updates
- US: Housing Starts by State and Region (Mar)
- US: New Res Sales (Mar), S&P Case Shiller Home Price Indexes, FHFA HPI (Feb), Final Building Permits (Mar)
- US: Steel Imports (Mar-Prelim)
- US: Richmond Fed Mfg & Service Sector Surveys (Apr)
- US: Consumer Confidence (Apr)
- Belgium: Business Confidence (Apr)
- US: Regional Building Permits (Mar and YTD)
- Ireland: Bank Lending Survey (Q2)
- more updates...
Economy in Brief
U.S. New Home Sales and Prices Strengthen
Sales of new single-family homes during March increased 4.0% (8.8% y/y) to 694,000 (SAAR)...
U.S. FHFA House Price Index Continues to Strengthen
The FHFA index of U.S. house prices rose 0.6% during February...
U.S. Energy Prices Rise Further
Retail gasoline prices increased to $2.80 per gallon last week (14.3% y/y)...
U.S. Existing Home Sales & Prices Rise Again
The NAR reported that sales of existing homes increased 1.1% during March (-1.2% y/y) to 5.600 million units (AR)...
PMIs Stabilize or Creep Higher After Drop-Off
In the EMU, both the services and manufacturing sectors took a substantial step down one month ago...
by Robert Brusca November 8, 2007
The economy watcher’s index is dropping rapidly and so is the
future index. Each of them is at a relative low point in its five year
range in the low 40th percentile of it. The weakness in these survey indexes
is set in the table against the NTC survey of manufacturing sentiment.
MFG sentiment is even weaker, residing in the bottom 15 percentile of
its range. Clearly Japan is
having some difficulty with growth. Both the anecdotal economy watchers
survey and the more grounded NTC survey of manufacturers show fading
growth and very low current activity readings.
Key Japanese Surveys | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Raw readings of each survey | Percent of 5Yr range | ||||||
Oct-07 | Sep-07 | Aug-07 | Jul-07 | Oct-07 | Sep-07 | Aug-07 | |
Diffusion | |||||||
Economy Watchers | 41.5 | 42.9 | 44.1 | 44.7 | 27.5% | 33.9% | 39.4% |
Employment | 43.8 | 48.8 | 48.3 | 51.2 | 21.5% | 39.4% | 37.6% |
Future | 43.1 | 46.0 | 46.5 | 46.7 | 32.2% | 46.7% | 49.2% |
NTC MFG | 49.5 | 49.8 | -- | -- | 15.5% | 18.7% | 16.2% |