Existing home sales as reported by the National Association of Realtors fell 7.1% in February 2016 from the month before. It was a very large decline but followed a two-month surge beginning December 2015; which itself came after an unusually large decline in November. In other words, housing and home sales seems to be that much more volatile of late. [...]
According to Discern Investment Analytics, the number of retail store closings in the first two months of 2016 was about a third more than the closings in the same two months last year. That’s bad news just in terms of the raw increase, but more so given that there was a wave of shutting retailer outlets last year, too. Store [...]
By Bob Williams You’ve heard it said that the government giveth and the government taketh away. It’s happening again. This time retirement dollars for couples are being taken. With the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 Congress prohibited spouses from coordinating Social Security Benefits. Now, Americans on the brink of retirement are scrambling to see how much damage [...]
The yield on the Japanese government’s 10-year paper traded negative yesterday for the 17th straight session. When Haruhiko Kuroda first announced his negative rate experimentation, the 10-year JGB was low but still safely positive, yielding 22.9 bps on January 28. It would be negative for the first time on February 9 right as the rest of the world started to [...]
In the summer of 2014, repo fails suddenly surged out of nowhere. Between the events of the violent taper selloff in June 2013 and the first half of 2014, fails had been particularly calm if somewhat gently rising as the trend had it dating back to the QE’s. It had become common to find total fails (meaning both “to receive” [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard The economic data calendar has been light the last two weeks but the tone of the data has generally improved. On the whole though I find it hard to discern a big change in the US economy. The two manufacturing surveys were bright spots in the ongoing manufacturing recession. Empire State and Philly Fed both were much [...]
There was a robust debate inside economics earlier in the recovery period over Okun’s “Law”, the seemingly stable relationship between the unemployment rate and real GDP. The Great Recession was stunningly large in terms of the skyrocketing unemployment rate given that initial estimates for real GDP were bad but not as catastrophic. This was more than a theoretical problem for [...]
The Fed threw in the towel this week and acknowledged what the market has known for some time. The four rate hikes previously envisioned for this year are now just two - the dots are falling. According to the Fed, the economy is just fine, just not fine enough to handle interest rates that don't have a zero before the [...]
From June 2014 until late January 2015, oil prices (WTI) fell about 60%. From June 2015 until late January 2016, oil prices (WTI) fell about 60%. The exact track each annual trading history took to achieve those results is different (2014-15 much more straight ahead and persistent; 2015-16 jagged and irregular), but you can’t deny the repetition in both the [...]
The latest JOLTS update finds total hires in January down by a rather large 372k, leaving the monthly seasonally-adjusted rate at still 5 million. Given that the estimated hires rate increased unusually in December, it seems as if January was the statistical catchup or seasonal give-back. That leaves intact the same sideways pattern that first appeared around October 2014. Throughout [...]
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