Economy in Brief

The housing sector is convincingly on the mend according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo report on housing market activity. The Composite Housing Market Index for January rose another four points to 25, [...]

Industrial production recovered 0.4% (2.9% y/y) during December following an unrevised 0.2% November slip. The latest gain roughly matched Consensus expectations, according to Action Economics. Factory sector output rose a stronger [...]

Overall inflation may be tame but trouble was brewing last year. The December producer price index for finished goods slipped 0.1% during December following an unrevised 0.3% November gain. The figure compared to Consensus [...]

The OECD leading indicators have not thrown in the towel on Japan’s growth. But Japan’s trends continue to haunt the outlook. IP for mining and MFG fell by 2.7% in November. MFG output alone fell by 2.7% in November. The chart on [...]

The Zew expectations reading has made a sharp turn higher from a reading of -53.8 in December tone of -21.6 in January. This the largest one month jump in the expectations reading in the history of the series back to 1992. The current [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit deepened during November for the first time in five months. The shortfall rose to $47.8B from a revised $43.3B in October, initially reported as $43.5B. Expectations had been for $44.7B according to [...]

U.S. import prices matched expectations and slipped 0.1% last month. That followed a revised 0.8% November gain, initially reported as 0.7%. Year-to-year, higher oil prices and the lower value of the dollar raised prices for imported [...]

OECD LEIs – The trend-adjusted LEIs are lower nearly across the board in November - the US is the exception as its index rose; Japan’s, hovering above 100, stayed the same. The indicator ratios-to-trend, however, are below 100 [...]