Economy in Brief: April 2016

Regular gasoline prices remained fairly steady last week at $2.07 per gallon (-14.1% y/y) versus $2.08 in the prior week, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The price compares to a low of $1.72 in February, but remained down [...]

Import prices improved 0.2% during March (-6.2% y/y) following a 0.4% February decline, revised from -0.3%. The increase was much softer than the 1.0% rise expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Petroleum import prices [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index eased 0.3% during March to 92.6 following a slightly revised 1.1% February fall. It was the fourth decline in the last five months and [...]

Improvement in factory sector output continues to support pricing power in the industrial sector. The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) increased 1.0% during [...]

The OECD headline index has been below 100 for six straight months and it had cultivated comparison with the Sherlock Holmes episode in which the dog `did not bark.' The LEIs are watchdogs of a sort and they are supposed to signal a [...]

Inventories at the wholesale level declined 0.5% during February (+0.5% y/y) following a 0.2% January drop, revised from +0.3%. The shortfall reflected a 1.1% decline (+3.7% y/y) in the nondurable goods sector, despite a 1.5% rise [...]

The U.K. shows poor, and many worsening, short-term trends U.K. industrial production fell by 1.1% in February; it is showing sequential declines in output from 12-month to six-month to three-month, but it is not consistently getting [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that the Composite Index of Home Affordability increased 2.2% m/m to 174.9 in February following a 5.4% January gain. Nevertheless, the index remained down 3.5% versus 12-months earlier. [...]