Economy in Brief: 2018

Japan’s PPI jumped by 0.5% in May as both consumer goods prices and intermediate goods prices gained 0.6% on the month. The headline PPI rose by 0.5% after a meager 0.1% increase in April and a 0.2% decline in March. In part, as a [...]

Retail gasoline prices declined to $2.83 per gallon last week (+23.8% y/y) from $2.88 per gallon during the prior week. Prices have fallen for four consecutive weeks. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicated in its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey that the General Business Activity Index rose to 36.5 during June after increasing to 26.8 in May. The rise brought it to the highest level since [...]

All of the early-release IFO climate and aggregate metrics in the top portion of the table declined in June. All-sector climate fell, manufacturing climate fell, and construction climate fell. The current business situation index [...]

New single-family home sales increased 6.7% (14.1% y/y) to 689,000 (SAAR) during May following a 3.7% April decline to 646,000, revised from 662,000. Expectations had been for 680,000 sales in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) slipped 0.5% during the last four weeks, but increased 12.7% during the last year. Industrial materials prices overall [...]

PMIs in June in the EMU area showed some respite from the steady decline in recent months. Services PMIs showed some recovery as manufacturing has continued to slip. The gain in services has been enough to boost the overall PMI gauge. [...]

The French manufacturing sector gives a steady signal in June but at a level that is off-peak. French services tick higher on the month. In general, the French indexes are moving in concert with those from Germany’s IFO index. Europe [...]