Economy in Brief: June 2011

German retailing weakens - German retail sales (real sales ex-autos) fell by 3% in May (yes, M/M) a surprisingly sharp drop, taking the Yr/Yr growth rate to -2.9%. Meanwhile, auto registrations did move sharply higher in May as oil [...]

Initial claims for jobless insurance held roughly steady at 428,000 during the June 25th week versus an unrevised 429,000 during the week prior. The latest compared to Consensus expectations for 422,000 claims. The four-week moving [...]

The EU indices show another month of weakness as the overall sentiment index dropped for both EU and EMU as a run of weakness enveloped most of the large member countries. Spain is the exception and Spain alone is up to its cycle peak [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of existing single-family homes rose 8.2% last month after a little-revised 11.3% April decline. Despite the monthly improvement sales this quarter remained down [...]

Overall mortgage applications fell 2.7% last week following the prior week's 5.9% shortfall. Nevertheless, strength earlier in June raised the monthly average 4.6% from May. Applications to refinance a mortgage led that increase. [...]

Chain store sales jumped 2.9% last week following modest declines during the prior two weeks. The increase left sales so far in June down 0.5% versus May, but that was half the m/m drop as of the prior week. During the last ten years [...]

The Equitization Ratio, the ratio of the market capitalization of a country to its gross domestic product has become a popular measure of stock market valuations. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying "this ratio is probably the best [...]

The Conference Board reported that its June Index of Consumer Confidence fell 5.2% to 58.6. That followed a 6.5% May decline which was slightly-less-than reported initially. The latest figure contrasted with Consensus expectations for [...]