Economy in Brief: March 2018

Spain's trade deficit widened to 4.0 billion euros in January from 1.1 billion euros in December/ Exports fell by 2.2% m/m as imports jumped by 9.4% m/m driving the deficit higher. Spanish data are hard handicap because of their [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes increased 3.0% during February (1.1% y/y) to 5.540 million (AR) from an unrevised 5.380 million in January. Expectations were for 5.41 million sales in the [...]

The U.S. current account deficit rose to $128.2 billion during Q4 2017 from $101.5 billion in Q3. It was the largest deficit since Q4 2008. The Q4 deficit figure compared to $124.7 billion expected in the Action Economics Forecast [...]

The ZEW expectations for Germany as well as across a number of developed economies pulled back relatively sharply in March as fears of a trade war touched all the outlooks and the rising euro had some special consequences for EMU [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Nonmanufacturing Business Index of current conditions at the company level declined to 27.6 in March from 32.1 during February. It was the lowest index level since December. Forty-one percent [...]

Retail gasoline prices rose to $2.60 per gallon last week (11.9% y/y), but remained below last month's high of $2.64 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in gasoline pump prices. The [...]

While the EMU trade surplus is the lowest in three months, it is also still higher than five month's surpluses back to January 2017 and higher than anything before November 2014. The 12-month average for a surplus is 20.1 billion [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) improved 1.2% (7.3% y/y) during the last four weeks as factory sector production around the world continued to improve. [...]