Economy in Brief: 2018

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased 0.6% during February following a 0.8% January gain, revised from 1.0%. The y/y change rose to 6.5%, its strongest since July 2014. A 0.5% rise had been [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices rose 7.3% y/y in January, following December's 6.7% advance, revised up from 6.5%. The rate of increase has improved from 5.3% in 2014 and contrasts to the house [...]

Initial applications for jobless insurance rose to 229,000 during the week ended March 17 from an unrevised 226,000 in the prior week. Claims remain near the lowest level since December 1969. Expectations had been for 225,000 claims [...]

At today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the federal funds rate target was raised to a range of 1.50%-1.75% from 1.25%-1.50%. The financial markets had expected today's action as indicated in the Action Economics [...]

Spain's trade deficit widened to 4.0 billion euros in January from 1.1 billion euros in December/ Exports fell by 2.2% m/m as imports jumped by 9.4% m/m driving the deficit higher. Spanish data are hard handicap because of their [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes increased 3.0% during February (1.1% y/y) to 5.540 million (AR) from an unrevised 5.380 million in January. Expectations were for 5.41 million sales in the [...]

The U.S. current account deficit rose to $128.2 billion during Q4 2017 from $101.5 billion in Q3. It was the largest deficit since Q4 2008. The Q4 deficit figure compared to $124.7 billion expected in the Action Economics Forecast [...]

The ZEW expectations for Germany as well as across a number of developed economies pulled back relatively sharply in March as fears of a trade war touched all the outlooks and the rising euro had some special consequences for EMU [...]