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Indicator Review: 5/19/14 - 5/25/14; Existing Home Sales

Jun. 08, 2014 11:00 PM ET
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DiAn Zhu's Blog
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The Indicator Review aggregates the primary economic reports released each month/quarter in one place and arranges them in five categories: overall economy, real estate, business operations, business sales, and consumers. The review is updated weekly (usually by Sunday) and is primarily for students and investors who need to catch up on what happened in the market. Any reported errors can be messaged to me or left in the comments. A tutorial on reading indicators can be found on my SA instablog post.

New Reports: Existing Home Sales

OVERALL ECONOMY

GDP

GDP up slightly to $15.95T, Personal Consumption up to $10.91T, Private Investment down to $2.60T, Government Spending down slightly to $2.86T, Trade Deficit up to $0.41T.

Q1 non-residential investment down 2.1% vs. Q4 up 5.7%. Q4 residential investment down 5.7% vs. Q3 down 7.9%.

Q1 real exports down 7.6% and imports down 1.4% vs. Q4 up 9.5% and up 1.5%, respectively.

Employee Situation

Long Term Unemployment down to 35.3% of unemployed.

Employment up in Professional and business services, Retail trade, Wholesale trade, Food and drinking places, construction, healthcare, mining, and little changed for other major industries.

Consumer Price Index

Energy index up 0.3% and Food index up 0.4%. For energy: Electricity (-2.6%), Natural gas (0.3%), Fuel (-3.0%), Gasoline (2.3%).

CPI Core components: Commodities less food and energy commodities (0.1%), Services less energy services (0.3%) with sub-indices: Shelter (0.2%), Medical care (0.3%), Transportation (0.7%).

Producer Price Index

Final demand goods up 0.6% and Final demand services up 0.6% led by Margins for final demand trade services (1.4%).

Intermediate demand: Processed goods (0.0%), Unprocessed goods (0.4%), Services (0.1%).

REAL ESTATE

Housing Starts

HS MoM regional units and % change: Northeast (139K, 28.7%), Midwest (216K, 42.1%), South (486K, 1.5%), West (231K, 11.1%).

BP MoM regional: Northeast (112K, -17.6%), Midwest (164K, 1.2%), South (539K, 18.2%), West (265K, 7.7%).

Existing Home Sales

Lawrence Yun: Some growth was inevitable after sub-par housing activity in

the first quarter, but improved inventory is expanding choices and sales should generally trend upward from this point.

Steve Brown: The typical time on market shrunk in April, with four out of 10 homes selling in less than a month.

BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Employment Cost Index

Wages and salaries up 0.3% and benefits up 0.4% in Q1 for all workers.

Total compensation by occupational groups: Management (0.1%), Sales and office (0.3%), Natural Resources, Construction and Maintenance (0.5%), Production, transportation and material moving (0.6%), Service (0.0%).

Purchasing Managers Index

PMI: New Orders (55.1), Production (55.7), Employment (54.7), Supplier Deliveries (55.9), Inventories (53.0). 17/18 industries grew, 1 contracted.

NMI: New Orders (58.2), Business Activity (60.9), Employment (51.3), Supplier Deliveries (50.5). 14/18 industries grew, 4 contracted.

BUSINESS SALES

Factory Orders Report

New Orders excluding transportation up 0.6%. Shipments up 0.3%: Durables up 1.2% led by Transportation equipment and non-durables down 0.6 dragged by Petroleum and coal products. Unfulfilled orders up 0.6%. Inventories up 0.1%.

Unfulfilled orders-to-shipments ratio down to 6.44 from 6.49. Inventories-to-shipments same 1.30

Wholesale Trade Sales Report

Wholesales of durables up 1.4% dragged by Furniture (-0.6%) but helped by Electrical (4.2%). Non-durables up 1.5% dragged by Misc. nondurables (-2.1%) but helped by Farm products (6.0%).

Inventory-to-sales ratio same at 1.19.

Retail Sales Report

Industries with highest YoY: Motor vehicle & parts dealers (9.8%), Nonstore retailers/ecommerce (6.5%), Health & personal care store (5.8%).

Lowest YoY: Sporting goods, hobby, book & music stores (-2.1%), Electronics & appliance stores (-1.5%), Miscellaneous store retailers (-0.6%).

CONSUMERS

April Consumer Confidence = down to 82.3% from 83.9%

Consumer Credit Report

Total credit up $17.6B to $3.14T, non-revolving credit up $16.4B to $2.28T, revolving credit up $1.1B to $856.7B. Q1 student loans up $32.6B, auto loans up $12.1B vs. Q4 up $12B and $12B respectively.

Q1 credit card rate down to 11.83% from Q4 11.85%, and Q1 four-year new car loan rate down to 4.23% from Q4 4.42%.

Personal Income and Outlays

Compensation up 0.5% vs. Feb up 0.3%. Personal current transfer receipts up 0.6% vs. Feb up 0.8%

Personal Consumption for: Goods up 1.4% vs. Feb down 0.6%. Durables up 2.6%, non-durables up 0.8%. Services up 0.7% vs. Feb up 0.4%

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

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