Economy in Brief: 2016

The Composite Housing Market Index from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo held at 63 (1.6% y/y) during November following an unrevised decline from 65 in September. The NAHB figures are seasonally adjusted. During [...]

The headline Final Demand Producer Price Index held steady (0.8% y/y) during October following an unrevised 0.3% September gain. A 0.3% rise had been expected for last month in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Excluding food & [...]

The U.K. claimant count ticked higher as the claimant rate of unemployment remained stuck at 2.3%. The change in the number unemployed crept slightly higher in October. The net increase in claimants over three months was 25.2K [...]

Energy product prices continued to decline last week. Regular gasoline prices declined to $2.18 per gallon (+0.3% y/y) last week, the lowest level since mid-August. Prices remained down versus a 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver [...]

Total business inventories increased 0.1% during September (0.6% y/y) following an unrevised 0.2% August gain. Total business sales improved 0.7%, and were up 0.8% y/y. The inventory-to-sales ratio eased to 1.38, down sharply from [...]

Import prices improved 0.5% during October (-0.2% y/y) following a 0.2% September increase, revised from 0.1%. A 0.4% increase had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. These figures are not seasonally adjusted. A [...]

The Empire State Factory Index of General Business Conditions for November posted its first reading above zero since July. It rose to 1.5 from -6.8 in October. Expectations had been for -3.0 in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]

GDP growth plods ahead in the EMU in Q3 2016. Its 1.4% annualized quarterly pace beats the Q2 pace of 1.2%, but year-on-year the growth rate stays at 1.6%. Mixed results Quarter-to-quarter, there are slowdowns logged in Germany, [...]