Marketwatch 666

As is not unusual for the week between Christmas and New Years Day, the only widely watched report released this week was the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for October from S&P Case-Shiller, a report which is always released on the last Tuesday of each month.. This report doesn’t even report any prices of homes, but just a index generated by averaging relative sales prices of home sales that closed during August, September and October against the sales prices of the same homes when they sold during prior 3 month periods going back to January of 2000….by comparing repeat home sales prices on that basis, the Case-Shiller report indicated that their national home price index for those 3 months averaged 1.4% higher than it did for the same homes that sold during the same 3 month period a year earlier, which was up from the 1.3% year over year index increase indicated by their September report, which indexed sales prices from July, August and September, but down from the 3.8% year over...

Major shutdown delayed reports that were released this week included the 1st estimate of 3rd quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the November report on Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization from the Fed, and the Advance Report on Durable Goods for October from the Census Bureau… This week also saw the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) for September , a weighted composite index of 85 different economic metrics, which increased to –0.21 in September from –0.31 in August, which was revised down from the –0.12 reading reported for August three months ago.…that left the 3 month average of the CFNAI at -0.21 in September, down from -0.18 in August, which, as a negative number, would indicate that national economic activity had averaged below the historical trend over those three Summer months… in addition, this week also saw the results from another regional Fed manufacturing survey for December: the Richmond Fed Survey of Manufacturing Activity , coveri...

Major shutdown-delayed reports that were released last week included the Employment Situation Summary for November and the November Consumer Price Index , both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and both reporting after their October reports were cancelled, and the Retail Sales Report for October and the associated Business Sales and Inventories Report for September , both from the Census Bureau...in addition, the week also saw the Existing Home Sales Report for November from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which was on its usual schedule… This week also saw the release of the first three regional manufacturing survey for December; the Empire State Manufacturing Survey from the New York Fed, which covers all of New York state, an adjacent county in Connecticut, Puerto Rico and northern New Jersey, reported their headline general business conditions index fell to -3.9 in December, down from +18.7 in November, meaning that a plurality of Second District manufacturers a...

Delayed economic reports released ​last week included the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for October from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Commerce Department’s report on our International Trade for September , and the September report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories from the Census Bureau….in addition, late last week the Fed released regularly scheduled Consumer Credit Report for October , which indicated that overall consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, expanded by a seasonally adjusted $9.2 billion, or at a 2.2% annual rate, as non-revolving credit outstanding expanded at a 1.2% rate to $3,767.3 billion, while revolving credit outstanding grew at a 4.9% rate to $1,316.8 billion…. The major private report released ​l​ast week was the Mortgage Monitor for December , which now comes from the Mortgage Technology unit of ICE, and which indicated that 3.34% of all mortgages were delinquent in October, down from 3.41% in September, and down f...

Shutdown delayed economic reports that were released this past week included the September report on Personal Income and Spending from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the September report on Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization from the Fed, and the Full Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for September from the Census Bureau… The week’s major privately issued reports, released as scheduled , included the ADP Employment Report for November , wherein the payroll processor reported private US employers cut 32,000 jobs in November, the largest drop in more than 2 1/2 years; the light vehicle sales report for November from Wards Automotive , which estimated that such vehicles sold at a 15.6 million annual rate in November, up from the 15.3 million annual sales rate in October, but down from the 16.5 million annual rate in November a year ago, and both of the widely watched purchasing manager’s surveys from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): th...