Economy in Brief: March 2014

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that their total mortgage market index fell 3.5% last week (-56.1% y/y) following a revised 0.2% uptick. Applications were roughly two-thirds below the peak in September 2012. Applications to [...]

German economic climate for April in the GfK format has stalled out or paused at a relatively high value. Climate in Germany gets better than this less than 5% of the time. That makes this level an impressive standing. Economic [...]

New orders for durable goods can be quite volatile depending on what's happening in the transportation sector, which accounts for roughly one-third of the total. Total durable goods orders recovered 2.2% (0.2% y/y) last month [...]

Consumers are emerging from a winter funk. Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, rose to an index reading of 82.3 this month (33.0% y/y) from February's little revised 78.3. The latest figure was the highest since [...]

New home sales fell 3.3% to 440,000 (-3.3% y/y) during February as January sales were revised lower to 455,000, initially reported as 468,000. The latest figure fell short of expectations for 445,000 sales in the Action Economics [...]

Energy prices did a lot of nothing last week. The price for a gallon of regular gasoline held steady w/w at $3.55 (-3.6% y/y), but still was up 35 cents from the January low. Prices remained below the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in [...]

The Ifo continues to hold the high ground with its overall index standing in the top 15% of its historic range. The current situation stands in the top 21st percentile and the expectations index stands in the top 14th percentile, [...]

The U.S. House Price Index from the Federal Housing and Finance Agency (FHFA) increased 0.5% during January and by 7.4% y/y. That annual rate of appreciation has been steady since early last year. During the last twelve months prices [...]