Economy in Brief: March 2015

New orders for durable goods fell 1.4% during February (+0.6% y/y) following a 2.0% January increase, initially estimated as 2.8%. An 8.9% decline (-22.4 y/y) in nondefense aircraft & parts bookings led total orders downward. Total [...]

Gasoline prices ticked 1 cent higher last week to $2.46 cents per gallon. Prices remained well below the $3.70 per gallon peak last June. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in pump prices. The [...]

The U.S. House Price Index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) increased 0.3% in January (5.1% y/y) following a 0.7% December rise, which was revised slightly from 0.8% reported initially. The three-month gain in prices [...]

New home sales during February increased to 539,000 from 500,000 in January, initially reported as 481,000. The latest figure was the highest since February 2008 and surpassed expectations for 470,000 sales in the Action Economics [...]

The euro area economic recovery continues to be led by the services sector recovery. Not only are the PMI diffusion values higher for services than for manufacturing, but the queue standings show that they are relatively much stronger [...]

The consumer price index gained 0.2% (0.0% y/y), the first increase in four months. While the rise matched expectations in the Action Economics Forecast Survey, a 0.2% increase in the core price index surpassed the average forecast [...]

Sales of existing homes improved 1.2% during February to 4.880 million (AR, 4.7% y/y), following an unrevised 4.9% January decline. Home sales remained down 5.4% from October and slightly missed consensus expectations for 4.92 million [...]

The U.K. economy is showing mixed evidence of a slipping industrial sector as industrial sector overall orders have dropped to a five-month low and to their first neutral reading in that span. Export orders are at their weakest over [...]