Economy in Brief

The U.S. House Price Index from the Federal Housing and Finance Agency (FHFA) has been roughly unchanged for two consecutive months. The marginal January decline followed a downwardly revised 0.1% December uptick, initially reported [...]

The economic outlook is getting brighter. The Conference Board reported that its Leading Economic Indicator index gained 0.7% during February following a revised 0.2% January rise, last month reported as 0.4%. A 0.6% increase had been [...]

The labor market continues to show life. That's the message from last week's decline in initial claims for unemployment insurance to 348,000 from 353,000 during the previous period, initially estimated at 351,000. Claims averaged [...]

Japan’s sector indices are each well below their recent peaks on the charts. Each shows a decline for the period of the financial crisis, from which manufacturing and services made some sort of recovery. Each also depicts the hit from [...]

Higher interest rates are having a quick effect on mortgage loan applications. The index of total mortgage applications fell 7.4% last week to 681.9 (+30% y/y), down for the sixth consecutive week. Applications to refinance fell 9.3% [...]

Sales of existing homes edged down in February to a 4.590M annual rate (+8.8% y/y) from a revised 4.630M during January, last month reported as 4.570M. Despite the edge down, sales remained near the highest since May 2010. Sales of [...]

Consumers in the Benelux Custom Union, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, are early indicators of changes in consumer confidence. March data for Belgium and the Netherlands were released today. Confidence increased among the [...]

Chain store sales rose 0.9% last week to the highest level since the holiday shopping season. That was enough to raise the year-to-year increase to 3.3%. During the last ten years there has been a 72% correlation between the y/y [...]