Economy in Brief: 2016

Sales of new single-family homes increased 3.1% (29.8% y/y) during September to 593,000 (AR) following an 8.6% August decline to 575,000, revised from 609,000. Sales of 604,000 had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast [...]

German consumer confidence for all intents and purposes peaked back in 2015. Then it swooned and recovered in 2016 to recover that peak, but now it is on the decay again. GfK does a look-ahead assessment of German confidence. That [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Market Volume Index declined 4.1% last week (+17.9% y/y) following a 0.6% gain. Applications to purchase fell 6.9% (+8.7% y/y) and were 12.0% below the June high. [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported that its October Index of Nonmanufacturing Sector Activity at the company level was little changed at 16.3, the lowest level since July 2015. It remained down sharply versus 53.9 in [...]

Regular gasoline prices dipped to $2.24 per gallon (+0.7% y/y) last week, but remained near the highest level since early July. Prices remained down, however, versus a 2014 high of $3.71 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors [...]

The Conference Board reported that its Consumer Confidence index for October declined 4.7% (-0.5% y/y) to 98.6, the first decline in three months. A 2.6% rise had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. During the last [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices increased 0.7% during August following an unrevised 0.5% July gain. The y/y change improved to 6.4% as the three-month increase rose to 6.2%, its best since April. [...]

The German IFO index made solid gains in October with the all sector index rising to 13.8 from September's 11.9 to stand in the 90.9 percentile of its historic queue of values. All the major early-release IFO gauges stand in the top [...]