Economy in Brief

Sales of new single-family homes during April slipped 1.5% (+11.6% y/y) to 662,000 (SAAR) from 672,000 during March, revised from 694,000. Expectations had been for 680,000 sales in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The median [...]

The chart of the PMI values is very telling and disturbing. With this month’s drop, the tail off in the PMIs is quite clear and the run up now looks like it was a flash-in-the-pan. Manufacturing’s PMI certainly ran up to a peak and [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Volume Index was off 2.6% last week (-11.9% y/y), following a similar fall during the prior week. It was the fifth consecutive week of decline and left [...]

U.S. Energy Prices Continue to Rise by Tom Moeller May yesterday (21.8% y/y) from $2.87 per gallon during the prior week. It was the highest price level since November 2014. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Nonmanufacturing Business Index of current conditions at the company level increased to 39.5 in May as it improved to the highest level since 2015. Fifty-two percent of respondents reported [...]

U.K. orders backed off from their recent high levels but continue to offer up a relatively strong outlook. The rest of the survey remains substantially upbeat from a business standpoint. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) [...]

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 [...]