Economy in Brief

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices rose 0.6% during February following January's 0.9% advance, revised from 0.8%. The 7.2% y/y rate of increase was nearly the quickest since 2013, up from 5.2% in [...]

Retail gasoline prices increased to $2.80 per gallon last week (14.3% y/y) following the prior week's six cent increase to $2.75 per gallon. It was the highest price level since July 2015. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting [...]

In the EMU, both the services and manufacturing sectors took a substantial step down one month ago. In April, they are holding their ground at a lower level of indicated activity. The moving averages, calculated on lagging historic [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes increased 1.1% during March (-1.2% y/y) to 5.600 million units (AR) following an unrevised 3.0% February gain to 5.540 million units. Expectations had been for [...]

The German year-on-year PPI has generally been decelerating since early 2017. Technically, the year-on-year PPI has decelerated for six months straight with this month’s acceleration being the first in the period. This is despite the [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) increased 0.4% during the last four weeks. The improvement was powered by just two sectors, metals & petroleum. During [...]

U.K. GDP is expected to cool its jets when the first quarter GDP number is released. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) estimates that U.K. GDP rose by 0.2% in Q1 2018. That translates into an annualized [...]

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased 0.3% during March following a 0.7% February gain, revised from 0.6%. The y/y change strengthened to 6.2% from 4.1% during all of last year. The latest [...]