Economy in Brief: May 2018

Strong demand continues to help power prices higher for energy products. Retail gasoline prices rose to $2.92 per gallon yesterday (21.8% y/y) from $2.87 per gallon during the prior week. It was the highest price level since November [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) increased 0.5% during the last four weeks and 9.4% during the last year. Industrial materials prices overall rose by [...]

Japan's current account surplus rose to 550 billion yen in April from 170 billion yen in March. The surplus is the largest in 14 months. Nominal exports rose by 4.6% reversing decline for the month while imports posted their second [...]

The euro area trade surplus expanded to 21.24 billion euros in March from 20.93 billion euros in February. Exports rose by 0.8% in the month while imports rose by 0.7%. However, over three months, both exports and imports are falling. [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Volume Index fell 2.7% (-5.6% y/y) last week, following a 0.4% slip during the prior week. Purchase loan applications declined 2.1% (+3.6% y/y), after [...]

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased 0.4% last month, the same as during March which was revised from 0.3%. The y/y change strengthened to 6.4% from 4.1% during all of last year. The latest [...]

European car registrations fell sharply in April with a 7.1% drop, marking their second drop in the last three months for what is intrinsically a volatile series. Sequential growth rates, comparing 12-month to six-month to three-month [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve reported that its General Factory Sector Business Conditions Index jumped to 34.4 during May, the highest level in a year. Expectations had been for a reading of 21.0 in the Action Economics Forecast [...]